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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Doreen Fletcher’s East End

Doreen Fletcher in her own words

Readers are 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 paintings which originate from the Potteries where Doreen grew up. These pictures comprise a significant body of work, painted by Doreen in her teens and early twenties, which have never been see together before publicly.

Salvation Army Building, 1970 (Courtesy of Brampton Museum)

Brook St, 1975

“This was the very first urban oil painting I ever did. I was inspired by the fact that each time I returned to visit my parents, a little more of their environment had disappeared and I felt an urgent need to record what remained. I little realised at the time I had found both a subject and a content that would last a lifetime.”

Bungalow in Summertime, 1976

“When I painted this, I had already lived in London for two years with my boyfriend, an art student at Wimbledon. During the summers we decamped to our hometown of Newcastle-under-Lyme on his motorbike which I loved riding pillion. On summer evenings, we drove around the countryside, stopping for a drink at a country inn and savouring the contrast between our new, busy lifestyles in London and the peaceful country lanes we travelled.

One evening, I was taken aback to see a suburban bungalow in the middle of a field. It looked completely out of place and reminded me of the house where my great uncle lived in which the heavy oak furniture seemed out of scale in the small rooms. Due to this I had developed a prejudice against what I saw as ‘bungalow culture.’”

House in Whitfield Ave, 1977

“The house where I grew up was declared not fit for human habitation in 1974. My parents were happy to move into a council property they were offered across the road from this one. There was a huge garden with two greenhouses where my dad grew vegetables in regimented rows, with tomatoes and chrysanthemums. He was delighted, but my mother was lonely and missed the intimacy of the cramped streets with a shop on every corner near the town centre.”

The Albert, Liverpool Rd, 1977

Takeaway Chip Shop, 1979

“This is typical of chip shops dotted all over Newcastle and the Potteries where long queues would form at tea-time and again after the pubs had closed.”

Black & Yellow Door, 1980

“Notice the foot scraper that all terraced houses had in those days, for knocking off the clay from clogs and later Wellingtons. The bright colours of the paintwork were trendy in the early-mid seventies, as opposed to the dull browns, navy blues and maroons favoured in the fifties and sixties.”

Beats Grocers, 1980 (Courtesy Potteries Museum & Art Gallery)

Finesse Hair Salon, 1980

“Hairdressers such as this abounded in the sixties and many remain today. My mum went every Friday to have her hair ‘set’ and, twice a year, she subjected herself to the torture of strong-smelling perm lotion, with her hair screwed in rollers, then baked under a hairdryer for a couple of hours. As a result, she did not have much left of her once luxurious hair by the time she was fifty. I grew up fearful of these hairdressers and, to this day, I delay a haircut as long as possible.”

House with Pylon, 1980

Gardeners’ Hut, Westlands, 1980

11 Whitfield Avenue

Red House in Talke, 1980

“When I went on the bus with my mum to visit my gran at Talke  during the school holidays, we passed this house somewhere around Talke Pitts and, even amongst the red brick of the Midlands, it struck me as very red indeed. I must have been eight or nine but the memory of it remained and, when I went in search of it fifteen years later, I was delighted to find it was still standing.”

Sheldon’s Hair Salon, Knutton, 1982

“It is my mother who is looking in the window of Sheldon’s hairdressers and dress shop. She went once a week to have her hair ‘set.’ At that time, she was ten years younger than I am now but considered herself old at fifty-five and dressed accordingly. When I was a child, we used to take a walk each Sunday afternoon to places such as Knutton, a former mining village on the outskirts of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Even in such a small place, a shop like Sheldon’s could support its proprietors.”

Chatwins Bakers, 1982

“I painted this ten years after I left Newcastle and five years after I first envisaged it. 

Chatwins Bakery was a family business, alive and thriving today, having expanded from fresh bread baked daily by John Chatwin and sold by horse and cart to twenty shops throughout Staffordshire, Cheshire and North Wales.”

Wrights Grocers, 1982

“I painted this in the early eighties while I was living in Paddington but it recalls a corner shop in my hometown. In the background, a row of condemned houses awaits demolition and it is apparent the grocery store is not long for this world either. The goods it contains are typical of what was on offer in any small shop across the country.”

Church in Brampton, 1982

“Although I was sent to a strict Church of England Primary School, I have been a non-believer since the age of five and a committed atheist since I was twelve. In spite of this, the Methodist, puritanical blood runs deep in my veins and I have never been attracted to Baroque architecture preferring the severe Victorian architectural styles of Newcastle and Stoke.”

View from Clayton Fields, Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1985 (Courtesy of Brampton Museum)

“This was a commission from Newcastle Borough Council. I was asked to removed the green and white stripes on the side of one of the buildings in the distance because the Chief Executive considered them an eyesore.”

Tiffany Dance Hall, 1979

Tiffany’s at Night, 1988

“Tiffany’s in the early seventies was the centre of the universe. I went there on Saturday afternoons with my friend Janet and later we graduated to Wednesday evenings from 7pm-10pm. It was the only time in my life that I visited a Dance Hall, they have never interested me since”

Winter in the Park, 1989

“This is the sister painting to the ‘Gardeners’ Hut’ but done many years later.”

Northern Stores, 1998

“Even in the sixties, the Northern Stores was an anachronism. It was a hardware shop I enjoyed visiting with my dad on Saturday mornings when he would buy something for his allotment, perhaps chicken feed or paraffin or a bag of nails for mending a fence. My pleasure at being out with him was heightened by the awareness that our next stop would be the art materials shop or the bookshop where he always spent more on me than he did on his own needs.”

Paintings copyright © Doreen Fletcher

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Doreen Fletcher’s East End

Doreen Fletcher in her own words

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