Cockney Beanos
A beano from Stepney in the twenties (courtesy Irene Sheath)
We have reached that time of year when a certain clamminess prevails in the city and East Enders turn restless, yearning for a trip to the sea or at the very least an excursion to glimpse some green fields. In the last century, pubs, workplaces and clubs organised annual summer beanos, which gave everyone the opportunity to pile into a coach and enjoy a day out, usually with liberal opportunity for refreshment and sing-songs on the way home.
Ladies’ beano from The Globe in Hartley St, Bethnal Green, in the fifties. Chris Dixon, who submitted the picture, recognises his grandmother, Flo Beazley, furthest left in the front row beside her next door neighbour Flo Wheeler, who had a fruit and vegetable stall on Green St. (courtesy Chris Dixon)
Another beano from the fifties – eighth from the left is Jim Tyrrell (1908-1991) who worked at Stepney Power Station in Limehouse and drank at the Rainbow on the Highway in Ratcliff.
Mid-twentieth century beano from the archive of Britton’s Coaches in Cable St. (courtesy Martin Harris)
Beano from the Rhodeswell Stores, Rhodeswell Rd, Limehouse in the mid-twenties.
Taken on the way to Southend, this is a ladies’ beano from The Beehive in the Roman Rd during the fifties or sixties in a coach from Empress Coaches. The only men in the photo are the driver and the accordionist. Joan Lord (née Collins) who submitted the photo is the daughter of the publicans of The Beehive. (Courtesy Joan Lord)
Terrie Conway Driver, who submitted this picture of a beano from The Duke of Gloucester, Seabright St, Bethnal Green, points out that her grandfather is seventh from the left in the back row. (Courtesy Terrie Conway Driver)
Taken on the way to Southend, this is a men’s beano from The Beehive in the Roman Rd in the fifties or sixties in a coach from Empress Coaches. (Courtesy Joan Lord)
Beano in the twenties from the Victory Public House in Ben Jonson Rd, on the corner with Carr St. Note the charabanc – the name derives from the French char à bancs (“carriage with wooden benches”) and they were originally horse-drawn.
A crowd gathers before a beano from The Queens’ Head in Chicksand St in the early fifties. John Charlton who submitted the photograph pointed out his grandfather George standing in the flat cap holding a bottle of beer on the right with John’s father Bill on the left of him, while John stands directly in front of the man in the straw hat. (Courtesy John Charlton)
Beano for Stepney Borough Council workers in the mid-twentieth century. (Courtesy Susan Armstrong)
Martin Harris, who submitted this picture, indicated that the driver, standing second from the left, is Teddy Britton, his second cousin. (Courtesy Martin Harris)
In the Panama hat is Ted Marks who owned the fish place at the side of the Martin Frobisher School, and is seen here taking his staff out on their annual beano.
George, the father of Colin Watson who submitted this photo, is among those who went on this beano from the Taylor Walker brewery in Limehouse. (Courtesy Colin Watson)
Pub beano setting out for Margate or Southend. (Courtesy John McCarthy)
Men’s beano from c. 1960 (courtesy Cathy Cocline)
Late sixties or early seventies ladies’ beano organised by the Locksley Estate Tenants Association in Limehouse, leaving from outside The Prince Alfred in Locksley St.
The father of John McCarthy, who submitted this photo, is on the far right squatting down with a beer in his hand, in this beano photo taken in the early sixties, which may be from his local, The Shakespeare in Bethnal Green Rd. Equally, it could be a works’ outing, as he was a dustman working for Bethnal Green Council. Typically, the men are wearing button holes and an accordionist accompanies them. Accordionists earned a fortune every summer weekend, playing at beanos. (courtesy John McCarthy)
John Sheehan, who submitted this picture, remembers it was taken on a beano to Clacton in the sixties. From left to right, you can seee John Driscoll who lived in Grosvenor Buildings, Dan Daley of Constant House, outsider Johnny Gamm from Hackney, alongside his cousin, John Sheehan from Constant House and Bill Britton from Holmsdale House. (Courtesy John Sheehan)
Images courtesy Tower Hamlets Community Homes
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Tree Huts In Epping Forest
Who can resist the lure of the forest in summer? Since Epping Forest is a mere cycle ride from Spitalfields, each year I visit to seek refuge among the leafy shades. And, in the depths of the forest, I come upon these makeshift tree huts which fascinate me with the variety and ingenuity of their design.
Who can be responsible? Is it children making dens or land artists exploring sculptural notions? Clearly never weatherproof, they are not human habitations. I wondered if the sprites and hobgoblins had been at work constructing arbors for the spirits of the forest. But then I remembered I had seen something similar once before, Eeyore’s hut at the edge of the Hundred Acre Wood.
Some are elaborate constructions that are worthy of architecture and others merely collections of twigs which tease the eye, questioning whether they are random or deliberate. They conjure an air of ritualistic mystery and, the more I encountered, the more intrigued I became. So much effort and skill expended suggest deliberate purpose or intent, yet they remain an enigma.
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At Waltham Abbey
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I cycled along the River Lea to Waltham Abbey. On my approach, even from the riverbank, I could see the majestic tower rising over the water meadows as the Abbey has done for the past thousand years, commanding the landscape and undiminished in visual authority.
Once you see it, you realise you are following in the footsteps of the innumerable credulous pilgrims who came here in hope of miraculous cures from the holy cross, which had reputedly relieved Harold Godwinson of a paralysis as a child before he became King Harold.
To the south of the Abbey church lies the market square, bordered with appealingly squint timber frame buildings punctuated by handsome eighteenth and nineteenth additions. Despite the proximity of the capital, the place still carries the air of an English market town.
Yet the great wonder is the Abbey itself, founded in the seventh century, built up by King Harold and destroyed by Henry VIII. Despite the ravages of time, the grandeur and scale of the Abbey is still evident in the precincts which have become a public park. Although the church that impresses today is less than half the size of what it was, it is enough to fire your imagination. An imposing stone gateway greets the visitor to the park where long, battered walls outline the former extent of the buildings. A tantalising fragment of twelfth century vaulting, which formerly served as the entrance to the cloisters, encourages the leap to conjure the cloisters themselves where now is merely an empty lawn. A walled garden filled with lavender and climbing roses draws you closest to the spirit of the place.
The outline of the former Abbey church is marked upon the grass and at the eastern end lies a surprise. A plain stone engraved with the words ‘Harold King of England Obit 1066,’ indicating this is where legend has it that he was laid to rest after the Battle of Hastings. I realised that maybe the remains of the man in the tapestry, killed by the arrow in the eye, lay beneath my feet. Coming upon his stone unexpectedly halted me in my tracks.
This was one of those startling moments when there is a possibility of history being real, something tangible, causing me to reflect upon the Norman Conquest. A thousand years ago, their power found its expression in the vast complex of buildings here, which were destroyed five hundred years ago as the expression of another power.
We too live in a time of dramatic transition, emerging from the shadow of the pandemic and accommodating to our country’s divorce from Europe. The equivocal consolation of the historical perspective is that it reminds us that empires rise and fall, but life goes on.
Effigy of King Harold
Harold cradles Waltham Abbey in his arm
The Lady Chapel
Victorian villa in the churchyard
The Welsh Harp
These vaults are all that is left of the twelfth century cloisters
Here lies Harold, the last Anglo Saxon King of England
Waltham Abbey
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Nicholas Culpeper’s Spitalfields
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Ragwort in Hanbury St
(The concoction of the herb is good to wash the mouth, and also against the quinsy and the king’s evil)
Taking the opportunity to view the plaque upon the hairdresser at the corner of Puma Court and Commercial St, commemorating where Nicholas Culpeper lived and wrote The English Herbal, the celebrated seventeenth century Herbalist returned to his old neighbourhood for a visit and I was designated to be his guide.
Naturally, he was a little disoriented by the changes that time has wrought to Red Lion Fields where he once cultivated herbs and gathered wild plants for his remedies. Disinterested in new developments, instead he implored me to show him what wild plants were left and thus we set out together upon a strange quest, seeking weeds that have survived the urbanisation. You might say we were searching for the fields in Spitalfields since these were plants that were here before everything else.
Let me admit, I did feel a responsibility not to disappoint the old man, as we searched the barren streets around his former garden. But I discovered he was more astonished that anything at all had survived and thus I photographed the hardy specimens we found as a record, published below with Culpeper’s own annotations.
Honeysuckle in Buxton St (I know of no better cure for asthma than this, besides it takes away the evil of the spleen, provokes urine, procures speedy delivery of women in travail, helps cramps, convulsions and palsies and whatsoever griefs come of cold or stopping.)
Dandelion in Fournier St (Vulgarly called Piss-a-beds, very effective for obstructions of the liver, gall and spleen, powerful cleans imposthumes. Effectual to drink in pestilential fevers and to wash the sores. The juice is good to be applied to freckles, pimples and spots.)
Campion in Bishop’s Sq (Purges the body of choleric humours and helps those that are stung by Scorpions and other venomous beasts and may be as effectual for the plague.)
Pellitory of the Wall in Hanbury St (For an old or dry cough, the shortness of breath, and wheezing in the throat. Wonderfully helps stoppings of the urine.)
Herb Robert in Folgate St (Commended not only against the stone, but to stay blood, where or howsoever flowing, and it speedily heals all green wounds and is effectual in old ulcers in the privy parts.)
Sow Thistle in Princelet St (Stops fluxes, bleeding, takes away cold swellings and eases the pains of the teeth)
Groundsel off Brick Lane (Represses the heat caused by motions of the internal parts in purges and vomits, expels gravel in the veins or kidneys, helps also against the sciatica, griping of the belly, the colic, defects of the liver and provokes women’s courses.)
Ferns and Campanula and in Elder St (Ferns eaten purge the body of choleric and waterish humours that trouble the stomach. The smoke thereof drives away serpents, gnats and other noisome creatures which in fenny countries do trouble and molest people lying their beds.)
Sow Thistle and Herb Robert in Elder St
Yellow Wood Sorrel and Sow Thistle in Puma Court (The roots of Sorrel are held to be profitable against the jaundice.)
Comfrey in Code St (Helps those that spit blood or make a bloody urine, being outwardly applied is specially good for ruptures and broken bones, and to be applied to women’s breasts that grow sore by the abundance of milk coming into them.)
Sow Thistle in Fournier St
Field Poppy in Allen Gardens (A syrup is given with very good effect to those that have the pleurisy and is effectual in hot agues, frenzies and other inflammations either inward or outward.)
Fleabane at Victoria Cottages (Very good to heal the nipples and sore breasts of women.)
Sage and Wild Strawberries in Commercial St (The juice of Sage drank hath been of good use at time of plagues and it is commended against the stitch and pains coming of wind. Strawberries are excellent to cool the liver, the blood and the spleen, or an hot choleric stomach, to refresh and comfort the fainting spirits and quench thirst.)
Hairy Bittercress in Fournier St (Powerful against the scurvy and to cleanse the blood and humours, very good for those that are dull or drowsy.)
Oxe Eye Daisies in Allen Gardens (The leaves bruised and applied reduce swellings, and a decoction thereof, with wall-wort and agrimony, and places fomented or bathed therewith warm, giveth great ease in palsy, sciatica or gout. An ointment made thereof heals all wounds that have inflammation about them.)
Herb Robert in Fournier St
Camomile in Commercial St (Profitable for all sorts of agues, melancholy and inflammation of the bowels, takes away weariness, eases pains, comforts the sinews, and mollifies all swellings.)
Unidentified herb in Commercial St
Buddleia in Toynbee St (Aids in the treatment of gonorrhea, hepatitis and hernia by reducing the fragility of skin and small intestine’s blood vessel.)
Hedge Mustard in Fleur de Lys St (Good for all diseases of the chest and lungs, hoarseness of voice, and for all other coughs, wheezing and shortness of breath.)
Buttercup at Spitalfields City Farm (A tincture with spirit of wine will cure shingles very expeditiously, both the outbreak of small watery pimples clustered together at the side, and the accompanying sharp pains between the ribs. Also this tincture will promptly relieve neuralgic side ache, and pleurisy which is of a passive sort.)
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Swan Upping On The Thames
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Since before records began, Swan Upping has taken place on the River Thames in the third week of July – chosen as the ideal moment to make a census of the swans, while the cob (as the male swan is known) is moulting and flightless, and before the cygnets of Spring take flight at the end of Summer. This ancient custom stems from a world when the ownership and husbandry of swans was a matter of consequence, and they were prized as roasting birds for special occasions.
Rights to the swans were granted as privileges by the sovereign and the annual Swan Upping was the opportunity to mark the bills of cygnets with a pattern of lines that indicated their provenance. It is a rare practice from medieval times that has survived into the modern era and I have always been keen to see it for myself – as a vision of an earlier world when the inter-relationship of man and beast was central to society and the handling of our fellow creatures was a important skill.
So it was my good fortune to join the Swan Uppers of the Worshipful Company of Vintners’ for a day on the river from Cookham to Marlow, just one leg of their seventy-nine mile course from Sunbury to Abingdon over five days. The Vintners Company were granted their charter in 1363 and a document of 1509 records the payment of four shillings to James the under-swanherd “for upping the Master’s swans” at the time of the “great frost” – which means the Vintners have been Swan Upping for at least five hundred years.
Swan Upping would have once been a familiar sight in London itself, but the embankment of the Thames makes it an unsympathetic place for breeding swans these days and so the Swan Uppers have moved upriver. Apart from the Crown, today only the Dyers’ and Vintners’ Companies retain the ownership of swans on the Thames and each year they both send a team of Swan Uppers to join Her Majesty’s Swan Keeper for a week in pursuit of their quarry.
It was a heart-stopping moment when I saw the Swan Uppers for the first time, coming round the bend in the river, pulling swiftly upon their oars and with coloured flags flying, as their wooden skiffs slid across the surface of the water toward me. Attended by a flotilla of vessels and with a great backdrop of willow framing the dark water surrounding them, it was as if they had materialized from a dream. Yet as soon as I shook hands with the Swan Uppers at The Ferry in Cookham, I discovered they were men of this world, hardy, practical and experienced on the water. All but one made their living by working on the Thames as captains of pleasure boats and barges – and the one exception was a trader at the Billingsgate Fish Market.
There were seven in each of the teams, consisting of six rowers spread over two boats, and a Swan Marker. Some had begun on the water at seven or eight years old as coxswain, most had distinguished careers as competitive rowers as high as Olympic level, and all had won their Doggett’s coat and badge, earning the right to call themselves Watermen. But I would call them Rivermen, and they were the first of this proud breed that I had met, with weathered skin and eager brightly-coloured eyes, men who had spent their lives on the Thames and were experts in the culture and the nature of the river.
They were a tight knit crew – almost a family – with two pairs of brothers and a pair of cousins among them, but they welcomed me to their lunch table where, in between hungry mouthfuls, Bobby Prentice, the foreman of the uppers, told me tales of his attempts to row the Atlantic Ocean, which succeeded on the third try. “I felt I had to go back and do it,” he confessed to me, shaking his head in determination, “But, the third time, I couldn’t even tell my wife until I was on my way.” Bobby’s brother Paul told me he was apprenticed to his father, as a lighterman on the Thames at fifteen, and Roger Spencer revealed that after a night’s trading at Billingsgate, there was nothing he liked so much as to snatch an hour’s rowing on the river before going home for an hour’s nap. After such admissions, I realised that rowing up the river to count swans was a modest recreation for these noble gentlemen.
There is a certain strategy that is adopted when swans with cygnets are spotted by the uppers. The pattern of the “swan voyage” is well established, of rowing until the cry of “Aaall up!” is given by the first to spot a family of swans, instructing the crews to lift their oars and halt the boats. They move in to surround the swans and then, with expert swiftness, the birds are caught and their feet are tethered. Where once the bills were marked, now the cygnets are ringed. Then they are weighed and their health is checked, and any that need treatment are removed to a swan sanctuary. Today, the purpose of the operation is conservation, to ensure well being of the birds and keep close eye upon their numbers – which have been increasing on the Thames since the lead fishing weights that were lethal to swans were banned, rising from just seven pairs between London and Henley in 1985 to twenty-eight pairs upon this stretch today.
Swan Upping is a popular spectator sport as, all along the route, local people turn out to line the banks. In these river communities of the upper Thames, it has been witnessed for generations, marking the climax of Summer when children are allowed out of school in their last week before the holidays to watch the annual ritual.
Travelling up river from Cookham, between banks heavy with deep green foliage and fields of tall golden corn, it was a sublime way to pass a Summer’s afternoon. Yet before long, we passed through the lock to arrive in Marlow where the Mayor welcomed us by distributing tickets that we could redeem for pints of beer at the Two Brewers. It was timely gesture because – as you can imagine – after a day’s rowing up the Thames, the Swan Uppers had a mighty thirst.
Martin Spencer, Swan Marker
Foreman of the Uppers, Bobby Prentice
The Swan Uppers of the Worshipful Company of Vintners, 2011
The Swan Uppers of 1900
The Swan Uppers of the nineteen twenties.
In the nineteen thirties.
The Swan Uppers of the nineteen forties.
In the nineteen fifties.
Archive photographs copyright © Vintners’ Company
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At Chatham Royal Dockyard
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Cliff, HMS Gannett – Deeds not words.
Behold the ancient mariner I met at Chatham Dockyard. After a long career navigating the seven seas, he now guides visitors around HMS Gannett permanently berthed in a dry dock on the Medway.
Over three hundred years, more than four hundred warships were constructed here and, during the eighteenth century, Chatham became one of this country’s largest industrial sites. Even today – thirty years after it ceased to be a working dockyard – the legacy of this endeavour over such a long period and on such a scale is awe-inspiring.
The vast wooden vault of the covered slipway, dating from 1834, is something akin to a cathedral or an aircraft hangar, and climbing up into the roof is a spatial experience of vertiginous amazement. At the other end of the dockyard, a ropewalk contains a room that is a quarter of a mile long for spinning yarn into cables. Midway between these two, I discovered the Commissioner’s Garden, offering a horticultural oasis in the midst of all this industry with a seventeenth century Mulberry at its heart.
Yet as my feet grew weary, my sense of wonder grew troubled by more complicated thoughts and emotions. The countless thousands that laboured long and hard in this dockyard through the centuries produced the maritime might which permitted Britain to wrestle control of the Atlantic from the French and the Spanish, and build its global empire, delivering incalculable wealth at the expense of the people in its colonial territories.
For better or worse, to see the machinery of this history made manifest at Chatham is an experience of wonder tinged with horror which cannot be easily reconciled, yet it is an inescapable part of this country’s identity that compels our attention if we are to understand our own past.
Horatio Nelson
HMS Gannet (1878)
The covered slipway (1838)
The covered slip was designed by Sir Robert Sebbings, Surveyor to the Navy Board & former Shipwright
HMS Ocelot (1962)
HMS Cavalier (1944)
Threads of yarn are twisted to make twine
Rope continues to be manufactured today in the ropewalk
Machinery from 1811 is still in use
The rope walk dates from 1729
Women were employed from 1864 when mechanisation was introduced
Officers’ houses (1722-33)
The Cashier’s Office where Charles Dickens’ father John Dickens worked as a clerk, 1817-22
Figures and coat of arms from HMS Chatham (1911) on the Admiral’s Offices
Sail & Colour Loft (1734) where the sails for HMS Victory were made
Admiral’s Offices (1808) with George III’s coat of arms
Entrance to the Commissioner’s Garden
Seventeenth century Mulberry tree in the Commissioner’s Garden
Richard Wellesley, brother of the Duke of Wellington, and Royal Dockyard Church (1755)
Main Gate (1720) with arms of George I
Visit CHATHAM HISTORIC DOCKYARD, open every day from February until November
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Lucy Hart, Head Gardener At Fulham Palace
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One of my favourite gardens in London is that at Fulham Palace. So it was a great delight 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.
‘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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