Social Distancing With My Mother
Anthropologist & Writer Delwar Hussain sent me this latest in his series of pieces, describing his experiences of self-isolating with his mother in the family home in Spitalfields
Portrait by Sarah Ainslie
I left my mother in the garden on slug watch. She had instructed me the precise type of rice flour to go out and buy. There are two kinds apparently. Ramadan is coming and she is preparing to make dumplings for those in the family who will be fasting.
Instead of walking on the pavement, I meandered down the middle of Fournier St. I paced myself, I had all the time in the world. I turned the corner into Brick Lane past the line of hearses that now park there daily. Although the restaurants are shut, some are doing take-aways and, from the number of Deliveroo cyclists waiting outside, it appears there is a big demand.
I waited for a car to pass before I continued on my way. There is something thrilling about walking down the middle of the road. It is not the risk of getting knocked over as much as knowing you are doing what you are not supposed to do, a small yet exhilarating rebellion. I shall be disappointed to return to walking on pavements again once lockdown is lifted.
The gates of Christ Church Primary School were open. The school is holding classes for the children of key workers and pupils with special needs, but the building is silent with none of the usual sounds of play and laughter emanating onto Brick Lane. My sister who works there tells me that most parents prefer to keep their children at home.
At Zaman Brothers Cash & Carry, customers were observing the new etiquette and rules. They wore masks and gloves, and were attempting to maintain distance between themselves. It is tricky, especially between the narrow aisles, full of pulses, spices and pickles, but I found the rice flour my mother needs.
The shop has started delivering to those unable to get out of their homes. Each time, the delivery boy waits while the shopping trolley is packed by a shop assistant before he goes out on another round. He was absorbed in a game on his mobile, scrolling intently with utter concentration, so contented that he looked serene. I had forgotten that I could lose myself in any activity without anxiety, without wondering what is happening around me.
At the counter, one of the Zaman brothers patiently explained to a customer concealed behind a pink scarf that the reason they do not have oori – a dark green bean like a mangetout – is because suppliers cannot send produce over now flights from Asia have been cancelled.
When it was my turn, he asked after my mother. He told me he will miss her kichuri this year. This rice and lentil dish is eaten each day in Ramadan when the fasting comes to an end. Every year my mother sends large Tupperware boxes of it to the Brick Lane mosque and those who go there to break their fast say they prefer hers to all the others. If my mother were ever competitive, it would be her sport, but this year the mosque will be closed.
I carried the groceries home. After weeks of lockdown, nihilism has overcome me so I bought a large bag of frozen samosas for myself too.
I was in time for my Zoom meeting. As I went upstairs, there was a knock at the front door. We were not expecting visitors. My mother stopped what she was doing, widened her eyes and raised her eyebrows while trying to remain calm. I call this her ‘Oh bugger, the secret police are here’ look. Usually, it is merely the postman but on this occasion it was not. A neighbour wanted to speak with my mother. I told the neighbour that we are self-isolating – while thinking ‘So should she’ – and that we have both been unwell. The neighbour looked agitated but says it will not take long and she will stand by the door. This is a woman who lives in an abusive household and has had to spend nights at our house in the past. So I left my mother and the neighbour at the door to attend my online meeting.
During a break, I came downstairs feeling a little unsettled. The people I had been speaking with were all discussing the loneliness of self-isolation, their fears about the virus, and their anger at our inept government.
I heard voices and laughter from the kitchen, so I opened the door. My mother and the neighbour were sitting at the table, making rice dumplings. Their hands were covered in flour and they were chatting away without a care in the world. My mother was demonstrating to the neighbour how to tidy up her dumplings and make them less spherical, which she was not managing on her own.
Alarm bells rang but I was uncertain what to do. ‘This is not social-distancing!’ I wanted to say. Despite my mother’s good intentions, the neighbour could be a spreader or we could infect her. Fourteen days since our recovery, we no longer know what we should or should not do. All I could do was to give my own version of my mother’s ‘secret police’ stare, as if to say ‘Can you explain what is going on here right now?’, but she ignored me and returned to her dumplings.
Later, after my Zoom meeting had ended and the neighbour had left, I got out the anti-bacterial sprays, wipes, hand-washes and the bleach, and began wiping down all the surfaces the neighbour might have touched.
‘Home is not safe for everyone at this moment,’ my mother announced as she washed her hands. ‘It never was before and it still isn’t now.’
‘She should know better,’ I replied.
I know my mother does not enjoy breaking rules in the way I do, especially given the possible consequences of a viral re-infection. Yet as I cleaned the kitchen I realised that she is right, it is compassion – rather than disinfectant – that will save us all.
Portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Vagabondiana
This is William Conway of Crab Tree Row, Bethnal Green, who walked twenty-five miles every day, calling, “Hard metal spoons to sell or change.” Born in 1752 in Worship St, Spitalfields, he is pictured here forty-seven years into his profession, following in the footsteps of his father, also an itinerant trader. Conway had eleven walks around London which he took in turn, wore out a pair of boots every six weeks and claimed that he never knew a day’s illness.
This is just one of the remarkable portraits by John Thomas Smith collected together in a large handsome volume entitled “Vagabondiana,” published in 1817, that it was my delight to discover in the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute. John Thomas Smith is an intriguing and unjustly neglected artist of the early nineteenth century who is chiefly remembered today for being born in the back of a Hackney carriage in Great Portland St and for his murky portrait of Joseph Mallord William Turner.
On the opening page of “Vagabondiana”, Smith’s project is introduced to the reader with delicately ambiguous irony. “Beggary, of late, has become so dreadful in London, that the more active interference of the legislature was deemed absolutely necessary, indeed the deceptions of the idle and sturdy were so various, cunning and extensive, that it was in most instances extremely difficult to discover the real object of charity. Concluding, therefore, that from the reduction of metropolitan beggars, several curious characters would disappear by being either compelled to industry, or to partake of the liberal parochial rates, provided for them in their respective work-houses, it occurred to the author of the present publication, that likenesses of the most remarkable of them, with a few particulars of their habits, would not be unamusing to those to whom they have been a pest for several years.”
Yet in spite of these apparently self-righteous, Scrooge-like, sentiments – that today might be still be voiced by any number of venerable bigots – John Thomas Smith’s pictures tell another story. From the moment I cast my eyes upon these breathtakingly beautiful engravings, I was captivated by their human presence. There are few smiling faces here, because Smith allows his subjects to retain their self possession, and his fine calligraphic line celebrates their idiosyncrasy borne of ingenious strategies to survive on the street.
You can tell from these works that John Thomas Smith loved Rembrandt, Hogarth and Goya’s prints because the stylistic influences are clear, in fact Smith became keeper of drawings and prints at the British Museum. More surprising is how modern these drawings feel – there are several that could pass as the work of Mervyn Peake. Heath Robinson’s drawings also spring to mind, especially his illustrations to Shakespeare and there are a couple of craggy stooping figures woven of jagged lines that are worthy of Ronald Searle or Quentin Blake.
If you are looking for the poetry of life, you will find it in abundance in these unsentimental yet compassionate studies that cut across two centuries to bring us a vivid sense of London street life in 1817. It is a dazzling vision of London that Smith proposes, populated by his vibrant characters.
The quality of Smith’s portraits transcend any condescension because through his sympathetic curiosity Smith came to portray his vagabonds with dignity, befitting an artist who was literally born in the street, who walked the city, who knew these people and who drew them in the street. He narrowly escaped a lynch mob once when his motives were misconstrued and he was mistaken for a police sketch artist. No wonder his biography states that,“Mr Smith happily escaped the necessity of continuing his labours as an artist, being appointed keeper of prints & drawings at the British Museum.”
Smith described his subjects as “curious characters” and while some may be exotic, it is obvious that these people cannot all fairly be classed as vagabonds, unless we chose instead to celebrate “Vagabondiana” as the self-respecting state of those who eek existence at the margins through their own wits. One cannot deny the romance of vagabond life, with its own culture and custom. Through pathos, John Thomas Smith sought to expose common human qualities and show vagabonds as people, rather than merely as pests or vermin to be driven out.
A Jewish mendicant, unable to walk, who sat in a box on wheels in Petticoat Lane.
Israel Potter, one of the oldest menders of chairs still living.
Strolling clowns
Bernado Millano, the bladder man
Itinerant third generation vendor of elegies, Christmas carols and love songs
A crippled sailor advertises his maritime past
George Smith, a brush maker afflicted with rheumatism who sold chickweed as bird food.
A native of Lucca accompanying his dancing dolls upon the bagpipes
Blinded in one eye, this beggar seeks reward for sweeping the street
Priscilla who sat in the street in Clerkenwell making quilts
Anatony Antonini, selling artificial silk flowers adorned with birds cast in wax
This boot lace seller was a Scotman who lost his hands in the wars
Charles Wood and his dancing dog.
Staffordshire ware vendors bought their stock from the Paddington basin and sold it door to door.
Rattle-puzzle vendors.
A blind beggar with a note hung round his neck appealing for charity.
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
The Pumps Of Old London
“We never know the worth of water till the well is dry” -Thomas Fuller, 1732
Hardly anyone notices this venerable pump of 1832 in Shoreditch churchyard, yet this disregarded artifact may conceal the reason why everything that surrounds it is there. Reverend Turp of St Leonard’s explained to me that the very name of Shoreditch derives from the buried spring beneath this pump, “suer” being the Anglo-Saxon word for stream.
The Romans made their camp at this spot because of the secure water source and laid out four roads which allowed them to control the entire territory from there – one road led West to Bath, one North to York, one East to Colchester and one South to Chichester. In fact, this water source undermined the foundations of the medieval church and caused it to collapse, leading to the construction of the current building by George Dance but, even then, there were still problems with flooding and the land was built up to counteract this, burying the first seven steps out of ten at the front of the church. Later, human remains from the churchyard seeped into this supply (as in some other gruesome examples) and it was switched over to mains water. Today, the sad old pump in Shoreditch has lost its handle, had its nozzle broken and even its basin is filled with concrete, yet a lone primrose flowers – emblematic of the mystic quality that some associate with these wellsprings, as sources of life itself.
Before the introduction of the mains supply in London, the pumps were a defining element of the city, public water sources that permitted settlement and provided a social focus in each parish. Now, where they remain, they are redundant relics unused for generations, either tolerated for their picturesque qualities or ignored by those heedless of their existence. When I began to research this subject, I found that no attention had been paid to these valiant survivors of another age. So I set out West to seek those other pumps that had caught my attention in my walks around the city and make a gallery for you of the last ones standing.
Holborn is an especially good place to look for old pumps, there I found several fine examples contemporary with the stately Georgian squares, and the Inns of Court proved rewarding hunting ground too. At Lincoln’s Inn, the porter told me they still get their water supply untreated from the Fleet river, encouraging me to explore South of Fleet St at the Temple, although to my disappointment Pump Court no longer has a pump to justify its name.
Up in Soho, at Broadwick St, you will find London’s most notorious pump, the conduit that brought a cholera epidemic killing more than five hundred people in 1854. Now it has been resurrected as a monument to the physician who detected the origin of the infection and had the pump handle removed. Today, the nearest pub bears his name, John Snow. The East End’s most famous specimen, the Aldgate Pump – that I have written of elsewhere in these pages – was similarly responsible for a lethal epidemic, underlining the imperative to deliver a safe water supply, an imperative that ultimately rendered these pumps redundant.
Perhaps the most gracious examples I found were by St Paul’s Cathedral, “Erected by St Faith’s Parish, 1819,” and in Gray’s Inn Square. Both possess subtle expressive detail as sculptures that occupy their locations with presence, and in common with all their pitiful fellows they stand upright like tireless flunkies – ever hopeful and eager to serve – quite oblivious to our indifference.
In Shoreditch churchyard, this sad old pump of 1832 has lost its handle, had its nozzle broken and basin filled with concrete, and is attended by a lone primrose.
In Queen’s Sq, Holborn this pump of 1840 has the coats of arms of St Andrew and St George.
In Bedford Row, Holborn, this is contemporary with its colleague in Queens Sq.
In Gray’s Inn Sq – where, in haste, a passing lawyer mislaid a red elastic band.
This appealing old pump in Staple Inn is a pastiche dated 1937.
This is the previous pump in the location above, more utilitarian and less picturesque.
In New Square, Lincoln’s Inn.
Between Paternoster Sq and St Paul’s Churchyard.
Outside the Royal Exchange in Cornhill. The text on the pump reads, “On this spot a well was first made and a house of correction built thereon by Henry Wallis Mayor of London in the year 1282.” Designed by architect Nathaniel Wright and erected in 1799.
Aldgate Pump marks the boundary between the East End and the City of London. The faucet in the shape of a wolf commemorates the last of these beasts to be shot outside the walls of the City.
London’s most notorious pump in Broadwick St, Soho. Five hundred people died in the cholera epidemic occasioned by this pump in 1854. Reinstated in 1992 to commemorate medical research in the service of public health, the nearby pub is today named “John Snow” after the physician who traced the outbreak to this pump. A red granite kerbstone across the road marks the site of the original pump.
Archive image courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Joanna Moore’s Spitalfields
Artist Joanna Moore undertook this series of drawings of Spitalfields’ less well known landmarks
The Old St Patrick’s School in Buxton St, dating from the eighteen sixties, stands upon the grass of Allen Gardens beside the Georgian vicarage of the former All Saints church – the last survivors of the nineteenth century streets that once stood here, long before the park was laid out. Enfolded by its lofty garden wall, containing huge exotic shrubs and dripping with climbing plants, this finely proportioned cluster of buildings rises with tall attenuated chimneys, like some mysterious castle of romance. St Patrick’s School is a tantalising enigma to those who walk through here regularly and have heard tales of the secret tropical garden which is rumoured to exist behind these implacable walls.
The Watchhouse on the corner of St Matthew’s Churchyard in Wood St was built in 1754 and, with the growing trade in human corpses for dissection, in 1792 it was necessary to appoint a watchman who was paid ten shillings and sixpence a week to be on permanent guard against resurrectionists. A reward of two guineas was granted for the apprehension of any body-snatchers and the watchman was provided with a blunderbuss and permission to fire from an upper window, once a rattle had been sounded three times. The churchwarden who lives there today told me that, according to the terms of his lease, he still holds this right – and the blunderbuss and rattle are stored in the house to this day. The small structure at the rear originally housed the parish fire engine, in the days when it was just a narrow cart. In 1965, the Watchhouse gained notoriety of another kind when fascist leader Oswald Mosley stood upon the step to give his last open air public speech.
Gibraltar Walk off the Bethnal Green Rd is a handsome terrace of red brick nineteenth century artisans’ workshops that once served the furniture trade when it was the primary industry in this area. Of modest construction, yet designed with careful proportions, the terrace curls subtly along Gibraltar Walk, turning a corner and extending the length of Padbury Court, to create one long “L” shaped structure. These appealing back streets still retain their cobbles and there are even a couple of signs left from the days of furniture factories, but, most encouragingly, the majority of these premises are still in use today as workshops for small industries, keeping the place alive.
In Emanuel Litvinoff’s memoir, “Journey Through a Small Planet” describing his childhood in Cheshire St in the nineteen twenties, he recalls the feared Pedley St Arches where, “Couples grappled against the dripping walls and tramps lay around parcelled in old newspaper. The evil of the place was in its gloom, its putrid stench, in the industrial grime of half a century with which it was impregnated.” And today, with a gut-wrenching reek of urine, graced by a profusion of graffiti and scattered with piles of burnt rubbish, the place retains its authentic insalubrious atmosphere – a rare quality now, that is in demand by the numerous street fashion photo shoots, crime dramas and pop videos which regularly use this location. There is a scheme to turn the Great Eastern Railway Viaduct into a raised park – like the High Line in New York – but in the meantime wildlife flourishes peaceably upon these graceful decaying structures dating from the earliest days of the railway, constructed between 1836 and 1840 to bring the Eastern Counties Line from Romford to the terminus at Shoreditch High St.
Nestling at the base of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s monumental spire for Christ Church, Spitalfields, is the tiny private roof garden on the top of 3 Fournier St, where what was once planted as a camomile lawn has grown to become a wildflower meadow with pink campions, oxe-eye daisies and sorrel abounding. The pitched roofs on three sides entirely conceal this verdant arbor from the street and create a favoured climate where freesias, carnations, honeysuckle, wallflowers, foxgloves, wild strawberries and lettuces flourish, surrounded by espalier fruit trees and rambling roses, all unknown to those who tread the dusty pavements of Commercial St far below. Built in 1754 by Peter Le Keux, a silkweaver, this elegant old house follows the same Tuscan Order of architecture that was Hawksmoor’s guiding principle, and as you ascend the staircase endlessly winding up to the roof garden, you come upon subtle intricate details, like banisters with square capitals, that match those across the road at the church.
The Worrall House of 1720 is the quintessence of the Spitalfields nobody knows – built in a secret courtyard between Fournier St and Princelet St by Samuel Worrall, the builder responsible for many of the surrounding houses, it can only be approached through a narrow passage behind a heavily-encrusted door. When you step through this door, into the dark cobbled alley lined with ancient planks covered with paint and tar that has not been renewed in over a century, you feel – more than anywhere in Spitalfields – that you have stepped back in time. Here Samuel Worrall built a handsomely proportioned yet modest house for himself in his own builders’ yard. Just one room deep with a pedimented door and stone balls atop the gateposts, it resembles a perfect lifesize dolls’ house. Facing East and constructed of a single layer of bricks, it only receives sunlight in the morning and is not a warm building in Winter, yet there is an irresistible grace and mystery about this shadowy house of enchantment, presiding silently upon a quiet courtyard that is outside time.
Joanna Moore’s drawing of Victoria Cottages in Deal St was done upon the spot where Geoffrey Fletcher, author of “The London Nobody Knows,”sat and drew the same view in May 1977, when this terrace was threatened by bulldozers. Built in 1855 by the Metropolitan Association for Dwellings for Housing the Industrious Poor, after the design of Prince Albert’s Model Cottages for the Great Exhibition of 1851, these are one of the earliest examples of two storey cottage apartments. Scheduled for demolition in a slum clearance scheme, they were saved in 1978 through the intervention of Peter Shore who was both local MP and Environment Minister. If Geoffrey Fletcher came back today he would be delighted to step through the old iron gate and discover well-tended cottage gardens where the fragrance of flowers hangs in the air. Pairs of neat white front doors lead either to the ground or first floor dwellings, which, although designed as the minimum in the nineteenth century, appear generous and sympathetic by contemporary standards. To the rear is a peaceful flagged courtyard where residents hang their laundry and tend the shared garden.
Drawings copyright © Joanna Moore
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List Of Local Shops Open For Business
A.L.Barry, Chandlers & Seed Merchants, Roman Rd
Every Wednesday, I shall be publishing the up to date list of stalwarts that remain open in Spitalfields. 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 revised opening hours at present, so I recommend you call in advance to avoid risking a wasted journey. Please send any additions or amendments for next week’s list to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
This week’s illustrations are shopfront photographs from the beginning of the last century, reproduced courtesy of Philip Mernick.
J.Garwood, Greengrocer, Bow Rd
GROCERS & FOOD SHOPS
The Albion, 2/4 Boundary St
Ali’s Mini Superstore, 50d Greatorex St
AM2PM, 210 Brick Lane
As Nature Intended, 132 Commercial St
Banglatown Cash & Carry, 67 Hanbury St
Brick Lane Minimarket, 100 Brick Lane
The Butchery Ltd, 6a Lamb St (Open Thursdays only)
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 (Call 0207 729 9789 between 10am-noon on Tuesday-Saturdays to place your order and collect on the same day from 2pm-4pm)
The Melusine Fish Shop, St Katharine Docks
Nisa Local, 92 Whitechapel High St
Pavilion Bakery, 130 Columbia Rd
Rinkoff’s Bakery, 224 Jubilee Street & 79 Vallance Road
Spitalfields City Farm, Buxton St (Order through website)
Sylhet Sweet Shop, 109 Hanbury St
Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane
Zaman Brothers, Fish & Meat Bazaar, 19 Brick Lane
Vanhear’s Coffee Rooms, Commercial Rd
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
Band of Burgers, 22 Osborn St
Beef & Birds, Brick Lane
Beigel Bake, 159 Brick Lane
Beigel Shop, 155 Brick Lane
Bengal Village, 75 Brick Lane
Big Moe’s Diner, 95 Whitechapel High St
Burro E Salvia Pastificio, 52 Redchurch St
China Feng, 43 Commercial St
Eastern Eye Balti House, 63a Brick Lane
Enso Thai & Japanese, 94 Brick Lane
Holy Shot Coffee, 155 Bethnal Green Rd
Jonestown Coffee 215 Bethnal Green Rd
La Cucina, 96 Brick Lane
Leon, 3 Crispin Place, Spitalfields Market
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
Quaker St Cafe, 10 Quaker St
Rosa’s Thai Cafe, 12 Hanbury St
Shawarma Lebanese, 84 Brick Lane
String Ray Globe Cafe, 109 Columbia Road
Sushi Show, 136 Bethnal Green Rd
Vegan Yes, Italian & Thai Fusion, 64 Brick Lane
Yuriko Sushi & Bento, 48 Brick Lane
S.Jones, Dairy, Bethnal Green Rd
OTHER SHOPS & SERVICES
Boots the Chemist, 200 Bishopsgate
Brick Lane Bookshop, 166 Brick Lane (Books ordered by phone or email are delivered free locally)
Brick Lane Bikes, 118 Bethnal Green Rd
Brick Lane Off Licence, 114/116 Brick Lane
Day Lewis Pharmacy, 14 Old Montague St
Eden Floral Designs, 10 Wentworth St (Order fresh flowers online for free delivery)
Harry Brand, 122 Columbia Road (Order gifts online for delivery)
GH Cityprint, 58-60 Middlesex St
Leyland Hardware, 2-4 Great Eastern St
Post Office, 160a Brick Lane
Huxtables Stores, Ironmonger, Broadway, Plaistow
ELSEWHERE
City Clean Dry Cleaners, 4a Cherry Tree Walk, Whitecross St
E5 Bakehouse, Arch 395, Mentmore Terrace (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)
Region Choice Chemist, 68 Cambridge Heath Rd
Symposium Italian Restaurant, 363 Roman Road (Take away service available)
Thompsons DIY, 442-444 Roman Rd
Pearks Stores, Grocer, High St, East Ham
Bluebells At Bow Cemetery
With a few bluebells in flower in my garden in Spitalfields, I was inspired make a visit to Bow Cemetery and view the display of bluebells sprouting under the tall forest canopy that has grown over the graves of the numberless East Enders buried there. In each season of the the year, this hallowed ground offers me an arcadian refuge from the city streets and my spirits always lift as I pass between the ancient brick walls that enclose it, setting out to lose myself among the winding paths, lined by tombstones and overarched with trees.
Equivocal weather rendered the timing of my trip as a gamble, and I was at the mercy of chance whether I should get there and back in sunshine. Yet I tried to hedge my bets by setting out after a shower and walking quickly down the Whitechapel Rd beneath a blue sky of small fast-moving clouds – though, even as I reached Mile End, a dark thunderhead came eastwards from the City casting gloom upon the land. It was too late to retrace my steps and instead I unfurled my umbrella in the cemetery as the first raindrops fell, taking shelter under a horse chestnut, newly in leaf, as the shower became a downpour.
Standing beneath the dripping tree in the half-light of the storm, I took a survey of the wildflowers around me, primroses spangling the green, the white star-like stitchwort adorning graves, a scattering of palest pink ladies smock highlighting the ground cover, yellow celandines sharp and bright against the dark green leaves, violets and wild strawberries nestling close to the earth and may blossom and cherry blossom up above – and, of course, the bluebells’ hazy azure mist shimmering between the lines of stones tilting at irregular angles. Alone beneath the umbrella under the tree in the heart of the vast graveyard, I waited. It was the place of death, but all around me there was new growth.
Once the rain relented sufficiently for me to leave my shelter, I turned towards the entrance in acceptance that my visit was curtailed. The pungent aroma of wild garlic filled the damp air. But then – demonstrating the quick-changing weather that is characteristic of April – the clouds were gone and dazzling sunshine descended in shafts through the forest canopy turning the wet leaves into a million tiny mirrors, reflecting light in a vision of phantasmagoric luminosity. Each fresh leaf and petal and branch glowed with intense colour after the rain. I stood still and cast my eyes around to absorb every detail in this sacred place. It was a moment of recognition that has recurred throughout my life, the awe-inspiring rush of growth of plant life in England in spring.
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Find out more at www.towerhamletscemetery.org
Val Perrin’s Empty Brick Lane
At Shoreditch Station, looking through to Brick Lane
Something curious has happened in Spitalfields. As the streets have emptied of people and shops have closed, it is as if we have passed through a time warp and the place is returning to how it was when I first knew it in the seventies. In this selection from Val Perrin’s superb pictures of Spitalfields taken between 1970-72, I have focussed on his atmospheric photography of the deserted streets, evoking the sense of abandonment which prevailed at that time.
Cheshire St
Brick Lane
Sclater St
Hanbury St
Brushfield St
Photographs copyright © Val Perrin
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