Spitalfields Life

Gravesend offers an ideal day out from Spitalfields in my opinion, but since I cannot venture there at present it was like a breath of fresh sea air when Peta Bridle sent me these pages from her lockdown sketchbook.

“I have been unable to do etchings while the printers are shut and painting is out of the question with my son Billy bouncing off the walls, so I started going out with my sketchbook.

I was given a couple of Geoffrey Fletcher’s books and he inspired me. Unlike him I cannot stand and draw, therefore my choice of subjects have been governed by finding somewhere secluded to sit. Each picture brings back memories to me now of what I could hear or smell while I was drawing. I had always intended to make drawings of Gravesend, which has numerous picturesque corners, and the lockdown gave me the opportunity.”

Peta Bridle

Shornemead Old Lighthouse

“It was a lovely warm evening when I sketched this lighthouse, built in 1913 to mark the river bank east of Gravesend and south of Tilbury. Today, the faded red metal tower is stored onshore in the Port of London Authority depot at Denton Wharf.”

St Peter & St Paul Milton Church

“The sundial above the porch reads ‘Trifle now, your time’s but short,’ with two worn shields and a plaque beneath dated 1797. To the right is a stoop where people can dip their hands to make the sign of the cross before entering the church, which was built in the early fourteenth century. I sat hidden in the churchyard, and could only hear the odd car and people passing beyond the church wall.”

Gravestones at St George’s Churchyard

“Along the churchyard wall is a long line of headstones. Many are for ships’ captains and river pilots, and I noticed epitaphs to sailors lost at sea or on the Thames.”

My Friend’s Garden

“I sat within my friend’s front garden next to a salvia bush alive with bees, while behind me I could hear workmen eating their lunch in a van and birdsong from the park across the road. Spot the rainbow in her window.”

The Lock-Up

“This is in a secluded courtyard and I could not draw all of it because a van was parked in my way.”

Statue of Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji DFC

“An heroic Royal Air Force fighter pilot and one of the first Sikh pilots to volunteer during the Second World War. He came to retire in Gravesend and today his beautiful statue can been seen in St Andrew’s Garden on the waterfront.”

Warehouse at the Canal Basin

“When I was drawing this unusual warehouse, a cyclist stopped and told me it was once an aeroplane hangar at Gravesend Airport, which operated between 1932 and 1956. The faded green hangar sits on top of concrete breeze blocks today and forms a narrow street between the Thames and the canal basin, often used by filmmakers and photographers as an atmospheric location.”

Thames From Shornemead Fort

“I cycled down to Shornemead Fort one evening and sat looking out over the Thames. Rivulets were hissing in the mud and the occasional ship slid past, heading out to sea. Shornemead Fort is home to marsh ponies and a playground for dirt bikers today, but it was built in the eighteen-sixties to guard the Thames against seaborne attack.”

The Canal Basin

“I sat behind a low wall next to a road, where I got showered with grit every time a lorry went past, while I was drawing this view of the boats moored at the basin with the old corrugated iron warehouses behind.”

The Marina

“Another view of boats moored at the canal basin. This was made in a hurry due to the approaching clouds and I had to give up when the heavens opened, even though the wind rippled the water surface, creating lots of beautiful reflections. For this subject, I used a brown ink I found instead of my usual blue-black Quink.”

Eukor at the Tilbury Docks seen from Gravesend

Cruise & Maritime Voyage Ship Berthed At Tilbury

“This is the only double page spread in my sketchbook. It shows  the view across to Tilbury Docks but I made two separate trips to draw each of the ships on different days, so the reflections in the water do not match up.”

Princess Cat

“This is our new cat who appeared at my back door as a very persistent stray last summer. She has managed to get her paws well under the table since then and is now part of the family. She was my model but she kept moving, which was why I ventured out to find new subjects to draw once the lockdown allowed.”

Drawings copyright © Peta Bridle

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Doreen Fletcher is an astonishingly brilliant draughtswoman. Even though her drawings are often undertaken as preparation for paintings, they stand as art works in their own right.

Readers are already familiar with Doreen Fletcher‘s paintings of the East End that were published in a monograph by Spitalfields Life Books and exhibited with such success at the Nunnery Gallery last year. Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to a selection of her early pencil drawings which originate from the Potteries where Doreen grew up. These pictures were done by Doreen in her teens and early twenties, and have never been see together before publicly.

Grandad at Prospect Terrace, 1975

“My grandad was a hard man when young, it was said he could break a brick with his bare fist. A survivor of Ypres, he gravitated to Knutton Forge in Warrington after the war where he met my grandmother, the daughter of a local shop-keeper who was forever making and losing money. As my granddad was twelve years older, it was assumed that he would die first but he was left a widower at the age of eighty-four and lived on for another eight years, despite a life of heavy smoking and beer consumption. To the end, he remained unable even to make a sandwich for himself, although he was a dab hand at making wreaths, a cottage industry in which the whole family took part every Christmas.”

View from our living room window, 17 Bailey St, 1975

“This was the view I saw from our living room window every morning, from when I was a tiny child until I left home at the age of twenty. It was identical to thousands of other views from other houses. At the end of the yard there was a row of three shacks – a coal house, an outside loo and a tool storage area. There was very little colour in those streets, save for the odd dandelion and escaped budgerigar, although sparrows abounded and there were pigeon fanciers with coops.

The house where I grew up was in a dip amongst row upon row of terraced houses, built in the eighteen-sixties to house mill workers. They were huddled together, forming a tight knit community of families, with corner shops surviving by selling produce on tick and a couple of pubs. Most of the inhabitants had been born within a few miles of Newcastle-under-Lyme, the only exceptions being an Italian couple from Milan who came to work in the mill, and a few Polish and Yugoslav refugees who spoke almost no English and who had a special delicatessen on the other side of town. All were accepted.”

Mum & Dad on the Front Step, 1976

“Alice, my mother, worked in a munitions factory during the war and became a servant afterwards. It gave her ideas about not having the newspaper on the table and no tomato ketchup, and healthy eating. Colin, my dad, was a farm worker who wanted to be a vet but did not like school and suffering a year long illness when he was seven  deprived him of the education he needed.

After I was born, they moved into the town from Stableford because he could earn more money there. When they started installing pylons in the late fifties, he worked on that. Later he worked putting in pipes for North Sea Gas too but, when he was fifty-seven, he had a brain haemorrhage at work, probably caused by a pneumatic drill, and never worked again.”

Houses Under Snow, 1980

Mother in the kitchen, Bailey St, 1975

“The scullery was a tiny multi-purpose extension. The cooker was by the entrance on the left, in front of my mother, and, on the other side, was a washing machine with a mangle. My mum is pouring water from a kettle kept on a shelf of the kitchen cabinet. I can still remember the midnight blue and gold hues of the teapot. I bought it as a present, thinking it was very posh and sophisticated unlike the common brown tea-pots in daily use.”

Directly behind her you can see a bath, which was considered upwardly-mobile when it was installed in 1957. There were no taps, the hot water came from the geyser on her right, so by the time there was enough to bathe, the hot water was lukewarm.”

St Giles, 1989

Corner Shop, Bailey St, 1975

“Almost every street had one or sometimes two corner shops, where provisions were bought on ‘tic’ with the bill paid, hopefully, on Friday. This was the morning after most workers got their wages. Mr & Mrs Jones ran the shop favoured by my mother and their daughter was an art student, so they were happy to pose for me.”

House in Whitfield Ave, 1977

House in Fenton, 1987

“Visits to Newcastle took on a new poignancy once my former home was demolished and I began to document the facades of the terraces that remained, wandering the streets often with my dad in tow, carrying a scrappy sketchbook and a camera I bought second hand.”

The Cottage Inn, Tunstall, 1998

“My grandparents ran ‘The Cottage Inn’ during the war and my dad my worked at nearby Shelton Bar Ironworks while courting my mum. After the war, the family moved to Prospect Terrace, Newcastle. Their dog, Paddy, moved with them but he used to take the bus every day at 11 am back to the pub in Tunstall. Everyone knew him, including all the bus conductors.”

House in New Ashfields, 1998

“I sold the painting I did from this drawing. I was attracted by the neat geometry of the brickwork. This house was in the New Ashfields, built a few decades later than the Old Ashfields where I grew up. The houses were generally more spacious and upmarket than my streets.”

Chapel in Silverdale, 1983

Fairground, 1977

“Every Summer, a fair came to Newcastle during the ‘Wakes’, two weeks in July when the potteries closed down and those who could afford it went away to stay in a boarding house or caravan in Rhyl, Blackpool or – for the more adventurous – Great Yarmouth. For those of us, who stayed behind there was the fun of the fair, with hotdogs and candyfloss.The summer I made this drawing, I visited Abergele in North Wales, where my boyfriend’s grandparents had retired. They lived in a bungalow in a suburban avenue close to the sea and, while I was there, we visited an amusement park in Rhyl. It was here I was persuaded, against my better judgement, onto a ride and I recall praying for the horizon to re-establish itself. It was the first and last time I ever took a fairground ride.”

Margaret Ann Hair Salon, 1995

Paintings copyright © Doreen Fletcher

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