An Old Whitechapel Bell
This Thursday 14th November Tower Hamlets Planning Committee meet to decide the fate of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Bring a bell and join the protest before the meeting at 6pm outside the Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, E14 2BG
‘Robert Mot made me’
This is one of the oldest Whitechapel Bells still in use, cast by Robert Mot in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada and also the year William Shakespeare arrived in London. Yet, even though Robert Mot is remembered as the founder of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1570, he did not begin the industry of founding in this location since bells are recorded as having been cast in Whitechapel as early as 1360.
Adorned with the sparse text of ‘Robertus Mot me fecit,’ this bell declares its birth date of 1588 in delicate gothic numerals and indicates its origin through use of the symbol of three bells upon a disc – at the sign of the three bells – the Whitechapel maker’s mark.
I climbed the tower of St Clement Danes in the Strand to photograph this bell for you this week and discovered it shares a common ancestry with its fellows in the belfry which were also cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, but by Mears & Stainbank in 1958 – nearly four centuries later. Close examination reveals they also carry the symbol of the three bells.
With a diameter of two feet and a weight of just over two hundredweight, Robert Mot’s bell is relatively modest in scale yet a dignified specimen nonetheless with its broken canons (the hoops that used to be attached to all bells to attach them to a beam) emphasising the exotic vulnerability of its age – as if it were a rare metal flower plucked roughly from a mythological tree, long extinct.
Today, the old Whitechapel bell rings the Angelus and may be heard by passersby in the Strand at 7:55am, 11:55am and 17:55pm. Its earlier function as the clock bell may be the reason the old bell has survived, since the other bells were removed by Rector William Pennington-Bickford during World War II for safe keeping at the base of the tower.
St Clement Danes was established in 886 when Alfred the Great expelled the Danes from the City of London and they settled along the Strand. Escaping the Great Fire, the church was in a decayed state and considerably rebuilt by Christopher Wren in the sixteen-eighties, with a spire added by James Gibbs on top of the old bell tower in 1719. During the eighteenth century, St Clement’s acquired a literary congregation including local residents Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith and David Garrick but, by the nineteenth century, fashionable society had moved to the churches of the West End.
Septimus Pennington, Rector from 1889, set out to minister to the flower girls and street traders of Clare Market and Drury Lane, work continued by his successor and son-in-law, Rector William Pennington-Bickford in the early twentieth century. Unfortunately, Pennington-Bickford’s worst expectations were realised when St Clement’s was hit by more than twenty fire bombs on the night of 12th May 1941, reducing the church to a shell.
Fearful that looters might steal the fire-damaged bells and melt them down, Pennington-Bickford had them bricked up in the Rector’s parlour and died from grief three months later, only to be followed by his wife who threw herself from a window shortly after. Yet through all this, Robert Mot’s bell was safe, hanging up in the bell tower. Postwar, St Clement’s was rebuilt again to Wren’s designs and the damaged bells recovered from the Rector’s parlour, recast in Whitechapel and rehung in the tower in 1958. Today, it is the church of the Royal Air Force.
When I asked Alan Taylor, Bell Ringer at St Clement’s, his opinion of the sound of the old Whitechapel bell, he wrinkled up his nose in disapproval. ‘Bell founding was a bit hit-or-miss in those days,’ he informed me, shaking his head.
As the Sanctus Bell, Robert Mot’s bell was originally used to summon the congregation to prayer, but I imagine it could also have been rung at the time of the Spanish Armada. Ancient bells connect us to all those who heard them through the centuries and, given the date of 1588, this is one that William Shakespeare could have heard echoing down the street, when he walked the Strand as a newcomer to London, come to seek his destiny.
Cast in 1588 by Robert Mot, Founder of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
Whitechapel bell cast in 1958 by Mears & Stainbank
Panel in the bell ringing chamber
Old church board, now in the crypt, indicating this was once the church for Clare Market & Drury Lane
Nineteenth century photograph of Clare Market (Courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Nineteenth century photograph of Drury Lane (Courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
St Clement Danes – Robert Mot’s bell is in the belfry above the clock
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Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
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Gillian Tindall’s War Time Memories
Contributing Writer Gillian Tindall’s new book The Pulse Glass and the Beat of Other Hearts has just been published by Chatto & Windus and will be read as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 in the last week of November
Gillian aged two with a Sunday guest who died a few months later when his plane disappeared on a clandestine mission
This year is the eightieth anniversary of the start of the Second World War but newspaper coverage has been muted. Yet anyone who was old enough to fight in that war is now over ninety and these valued survivors become fewer with every month that passes.
Is it perhaps that the Second War – compared with the First – had an uncertain beginning and a long-drawn-out ending? Let us remember the moment on 3rd September 1939, when poor Mr Chamberlain – forever unfairly remembered as a failure in a wing collar – was forced to admit on the BBC that his belief that Hitler would keep his word and not invade Poland had failed, ‘and that in consequence this country is now at war with Germany.’
We went into well-organised panic mode since it was believed that London would be instantly bombed flat. Huge numbers of coffins had been stock-piled. Enormous plans to rush all school children, mothers of smaller ones and pregnant women away to the supposedly safer countryside, were put into action. Everyone waited with indrawn breath. Only nothing happened.
There followed almost eight months of what became known as ‘the phoney war’ when daily life in Britain remained remarkably unchanged. Most people old enough to have wartime memories are inclined to date the true beginning of the war from the invasion of France in May 1940. My husband is among those. One of his earliest memories is of playing in the garden as a very small boy when his mother came out to say ‘France has fallen – we’re on our own now!’ His alarmed reaction was ‘What, me and my Mum against the Germans? What will we do!’
Fortunately the egocentricity of the young works protectively too and, when the bombs began to fall on London later in the year, he was reassured by his grandparents’ fatalistic belief that if a bomb had your name on it then it would kill you but if it did not you would be safe. Indeed, while the neighbours made for the shelter of the Underground when the siren sounded, his family sat out the Blitz of 1940-41 in their house. Only the cat was apprehensive enough to go under the table.
Such are memories of my generation, now respectfully collected by grandchildren, school pupils and students probing psychology. Yet, however willing the participants are to walk down memory lane, how difficult it is to convey the truth, especially the sheer ordinariness of war if you were too young to remember anything else.
I first opened by eyes and looked around at a world already heavily engaged in conflict. Most dads were absent – strangers in uniform who appeared rarely, if at all. All butter, sugar, meat, sweets, and tinned foods were rationed, and this seemed perfectly normal. Occasionally a grown-up would tell me ‘When the war’s over we’ll be able to have as much chocolate/jam/biscuits as we like!’ This sounded so improbable to me that I just assumed they were lying. Of course one could not have everything one wanted, that was the natural order of things. Perhaps it was useful lesson for life of which subsequent generations have not had the benefit?
Recently a bunch of students asked if I and several other seniors had been traumatised by the war. Although we were interviewed separately we all, both men and women, apparently said `No, no, we thought that was just the way things were.’
We knew we were the goodies fighting the baddies and that seemed logical and right. But what about the bombing? ‘Just part of the surroundings’, we said. None of us had been bombed out but we were all familiar with the sight of a ripped-open house with an interior wall, often complete with a fire-place and wall-paper, open to the elements. This was still the case for years after the war. We grew up with ruins which made splendid adventure playgrounds. The rebuilding of London and other cities took time. Even when I was virtually grown up, acres of small streets that had lain between St Paul’s and the Thames were still blossoming with yarrow and rosebay willow-herb.
I only have two memories that contain an element of shock. One must date from the spring of 1945. Since the Allied landings in Normandy the previous summer, the grown-ups had been able to say ‘Yes, we are winning the war now!’ After a day in the West End, my mother took me to a newsreel cinema, where they specialised also in travelogues and cartoons – a treat for a child in a pre-television world.
When the Pathe News came on there appeared the first footage of Belsen concentration camp, which the British had just entered. I remember to this day the shocked words of the commentator and the images, but what impressed me most was the reaction of those around me me. Someone was hissing, someone else was saying aloud ‘Oh the poor, poor things.’ Several grown ups were crying. At this point my mother hastily bundled me out of the cinema, thereby inadvertently imprinting the whole thing on me for life.
The other memory from the same year must have been either VE or VJ Day. I was allowed to stay up into the middle of the night to see the celebratory bonfire lit on the green in the village where my grandparents lived. There was a torchlit procession with people dressed up. Mr Jones the laundryman was pointed out to me, arrayed as a devil. On the top of the bonfire was a stuffed effigy. Hitler, I suppose. I knew that it was just like a big doll – yet when Mr Jones climbed up the pile, stuck his pitchfork into it several times and then slid down and set the whole pyre alight, I felt of shiver of something like atavistic dread. I think I was in no doubt that, had the effigy been a living man, Mr Jones would have acted just the same. The realisation of the human desire for retribution has stayed with me, as has the heat of that fire.
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Memories of Ship Tavern Passage
At Captain Cook’s House in Mile End
Where The White Chapel Once Stood
Adam Dant’s Children’s Games
Click on this image to enlarge
If I admit that Breugel is my favourite artist, perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that I got up the middle of the night in January to fly to Vienna and walk through a blizzard in the dawn in order to stand in front of his painting Children’s Games on the last day of the exhibition of his paintings?
Adam Dant has created this magnificent homage to Breugel’s picture for an auction at Christies in aid of the Well Child charity. How many of the games listed below can you spot in his drawing?
Gun run
Kiss chase
Fox hunt
Keepy-Uppy
Boules
Twister
Pogo stick
Parachute
Swing ball
Stick and railings
Head through the railings
Dolls
Dog dress up
Space hoppers
Broom Jousting
Skipping
Skateboarding
Rollerskating
Scooters
Blind mans bluff
Tag
Duck duck goose
Trolley dash
Noughts and crosses
Leapfrog
Sardines
Hide and Seek
Stilt walking
Hanging upside down
Tightrope walking
Balancing
Paratroopers
Drones
Monopoly / Cluedo / Ludo / snakes and ladders / chess / board games / racing games
Nintendo / Games boy / X box / Fortnite / ‘console’ games
Grab the i-pad
Ice bucket challenge
Hoopla
Spinning top
Poking poo
Blow football
Tin can telephone
Rock, paper, scissors
Follow the leader
Bumps
Beanpole swords
Capture the flag
French cricket
Catapult
Burst the balloon
Pirates
Hot lava
Obstacle course
Musical statues
Kite flying
Shoe chimes
Pinata
Window stickers
Ghosts
Ring a ring a roses
London Bridge is falling down
Hopscotch
Wink murder
Marbles
Ball games
Hobby horse
Cowboys and Indians
Chasing games
What’s the time Mr Wolf
Conkers
Make the Ice Cream last longest
Brain Freeze
Hula hoop
Tug o War
Love hearts
Window smashing
Hangman
Builders and Destroyers
Falling over
Red Rover
Go carting
Pumpkin carving
Window licking
Texting / Snapchat / Instagram etc
Breugel’s Children’s Games, 1560
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 CHILDREN’S GAMES are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts
Save Our Bell Foundry
Raising the NOT FOR SALE sign on the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
Bells are a universal symbol of hope and freedom. Our Whitechapel Bell Foundry is the most famous bell foundry in the world. This is where they cast the Liberty Bell which became the symbol of American independence in the eighteenth century, of the anti-slavery campaigners in the nineteenth century and the civil rights movement in the twentieth century. This is where they cast the Bow Bells which were broadcast by the BBC to occupied Europe during World War II as a symbol of freedom and resistance to fascism. This is where they cast Big Ben, the voice of Britain.
The list of bells cast here over the centuries and exported around the world is endless. Bells are still in demand and will always be in demand. Consequently, it would be an unthinkable act of vandalism if the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, its traditions and skills should be sacrificed for a bell-themed boutique hotel and private members club as developers Raycliff Capital are threatening to do.
Photographer Andrew Baker was there yesterday as protestors rallied at the East London Mosque before marching out in the rain, ringing handbells, to pin a NOT FOR SALE sign on the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
Next Thursday 14th November, Tower Hamlets Development Committee meet to consider the planning application by the developers for Change of Use from bell foundry to boutique hotel.
The planning regulations for Change of Use for industrial premises are precise. Firstly, the owner must prove that the previous use is no longer viable. There is no evidence of this with the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Secondly, the owner must prove that no-one wanted to buy the premises and continue the previous use. In this case, UK Historic Building Preservation Trust offered to buy the foundry to run it as a working foundry before the sale went through to Raycliff. Thirdly, the owner must market the property for a year seeking a company to continue the previous use. Raycliff have not done this.
Tower Hamlets Planning Committee’s legal responsibility is to decide the Optimum Viable Use for the foundry. By its nature, there can be only one Optimum Viable Use. So, while a boutique hotel might be viable, it is obvious that the Optimum Viable Use for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry is as a foundry.
It is disappointing that Historic England have chosen to support the boutique hotel proposal on the basis that a working foundry is no longer viable, without evidence to back this up. Even more disappointing is that Tower Hamlets Councillor Puru Miah’s Freedom of Information request, seeking all correspondence between Historic England and the developers, cannot be fulfilled before the planning meeting when the councillors will make their decision based upon Historic England’s flawed judgement.
Readers will recall how we collected more than two thousand signatures from residents of the borough back in August to trigger a debate at full council on the motion that Tower Hamlets Council adopt it as their policy to save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a working foundry. How unfortunate that the council ignored the wishes of those residents by refusing to have that debate.
Saturday’s protest was to have been held in Altab Ali Park in Whitechapel where rallies are frequently held. How unfortunate that the council which owns the park refused permission for the rally.
Mayor of Tower Hamlets, John Biggs, said in council in September that he was open to meet with UK Historic Building Preservation Trust to hear the full details of their business plan for their scheme to buy the foundry, re-equip it for the twenty-first century and re-open it – as they did with such success at Middleport Pottery in Stoke. How unfortunate that he has been unable to find any space in his schedule for this in recent weeks.
Are these the actions of a council which seeks to preserve the living heritage of the borough that the Whitechapel Bell Foundry represents?
More than 21,000 people have signed an international petition to Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. 780 letters of objection to the boutique hotel proposal have been submitted to the council, with only 6 in favour of it.
Within Tower Hamlets, people have met in mosques and churches, in a campaign that has brought together diverse communities for the first time in a shared desire to save our collective cultural heritage. As someone said to me at one of these campaign meetings, ‘If they can take the Whitechapel Bell Foundry from us, they can take anything.’
I hope that all those who rang bells at yesterday’s protest will ring them again from 6pm on Thursday 14th November outside Tower Hamlets Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, E14 2BG to demonstrate the strength of feeling on this subject prior to the council meeting. The more who can attend this public meeting the better.
Robert Oliver, holding the bell made by his father, the Oliver family worked at the foundry for 250 years
Photographs copyright © Andrew Baker
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Nigel Taylor, Tower Bell Manager
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Hope for The Whitechapel Bell Foundry
A Petition to Save the Bell Foundry
Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
Gram Hilleard’s Paintings Of Churches
Gram Hilleard‘s exhibition ‘The Spaces Between’ opens next Monday 11th November at St Mary Abchurch, Abchurch Lane, EC4N 7BA, and runs daily 11am-3pm until Monday 18th November – with film screenings on 12th, 14th & 18th November at 1:30pm.
Christ Church Spitalfields seen from Brick Lane
“This began a few years ago when I painted St Leonards Church for an exhibition about the Bishopsgate Goodyard development and I became interested with how the space was used. It made me realise that these churches have always attracted the same types of people through the centuries – those looking for sanctuary from the city, the spiritual, the homeless, the lost, and the silent watchers.
I went on to paint another ten churches including those of Hawksmoor whose temple-like volumes have always fascinated me. They were built at the edge of the city next to vacant fields and were perhaps the dreadful developments of their day.
My paintings are best viewed in the half-light of a church and include metallic surfaces that shine in the gloom. They are painted on panel in many layers, sanded, scraped backed and painted again – a process which for me symbolises the strata of time.
As the ever-changing metropolis grows unrecognisable through overdevelopment, these churches remain the same. Their slowly-weathering stones carry the vibrations of past lives and events, giving each place a unique energy. London may be asset-stripping to its own destruction, but its people always gravitate toward the quiet spiritual spaces that have existed for centuries.”
–Gram Hilleard
St Giles in the Fields seen from the Phoenix Garden
Shoreditch Church seen from Boundary St
St Lukes Old St seen from St Lukes Close
St George in the East seen from Pennington St
London City Mission built upon the foundations of St John Horsleydown
St Georges Bloomsbury seen from Little Russell St
Churchyard of St Anne’s Limehouse
St Alfege Greenwich
St Michael Cornhill
St Mary Woolnoth
Paintings copyright © Gram Hilleard
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The City Churches of Old London
Javed Iqbal, TV Repair Man
If you are looking for TV repair in the East End, I recommend you visit Master Tech in Heneage St off Brick Lane – where, not only will the job be done expertly and at a fair price, but most importantly you will have the opportunity to meet Javed Iqbal, one of Spitalfields’ most engaging raconteurs.
Although I do not even possess a TV, I was happy to spend my Saturday morning in Javed’s shop beside his workbench and surrounded by TV spare parts, as he topped up my tea cup from his thermos flask, while I perched listening to his extraordinary monologues, covering so many areas of existence with appealing levity. There is an indomitable good humour that underscores Javed’s conversation. A buoyancy which I found especially heroic when he revealed the years of overt antipathy and threats of physical violence he has withstood – just to create a modest life for himself.
One huge window gives onto Heneage St, and Javed sits upon a tall stool, level with his work bench at the centre of his shop, while the wall behind him is lined with shelves stacked with televisions waiting his attention. Upon the bench sits a large flat screen monitor with the back removed and – while exploring this labyrinth of wires and components – Javed is in his element, talking as he works.
“I came to Brick Lane from Pakistan with my father in 1960, and I went to Christ Church School across the road. On the first day, I went into the playground and I had my arm broken. I was the first Asian boy at the school.
I was seven. I came with my five year old brother Tasleem. We came in February and it was very cold indeed. It was strange, because I had never seen snow before and there was deep snow. We travelled BOAC. It was a beautiful experience. Forget the wonder of an aeroplane, I had never been in a car.
My father came in 1958. First he went to Liverpool and then came here and ran the Star Cafe on the corner, 66 Brick Lane. Once he was established, he came to fetch us. My father was very rich man thanks to the restaurant business, but he gambled it all away playing poker with Gregory Peck. He had the talent as a gambler and in those days there were few Asians, so it was a novelty for them to have one at the table.
The first house I lived in was 22 Princelet St where my father had a basement. Jews were the only people that would rents rooms to us. In those days, Irish, Jews, Blacks and Asians were known as ‘dogs.’ When I was a little boy, the Seven Stars across the road was dominated by the Kray Brothers. Every Friday night, somebody would go out from there round all the businesses in Brick Lane and whatever you did, you had to pay.
I was allowed to watch television from four until five thirty and then my step-mother would down sticks, she had the temper of a gorilla. After school, I went to help in my father’s cafe. The Pakistanis were all coming here to Brick Lane. It was a mixed area then, the gateway for everybody basically.
When I started at the Robert Montefiore Secondary School in Deal St, it was a different headache. The pupils were divided between Christians and Jews, with two lunch sittings, kosher and non-kosher. One week the Jews ate first and the next week the Christians ate first. There was no halal in this country then, but Muslims can eat kosher so I ate with the Jews. I had one friend, Janel Singh, we were the only two Asians in the school, a Pakistani and an Indian. People looked at us in a different way.
On the first day, we were told to take our clothes off and they thought we must have TB because we were both so skinny. When we went to school, the white people used to hit us. The Turkish people were scared as well, so we got together. When we went to school, we had to go four or five of us together to be safe. The headmaster was Rhodes Boyson who became education minister for Margaret Thatcher, and he said, ‘What happens outside the school is not my responsibility.’
When I left school, I worked as a porter at the Royal London Hospital and I was learning TV repair after hours with a man from Mauritius who had a shop in the Roman Rd. One night, I was beaten up there by skinheads – it was sixteen to one. They beat me unconscious and, after I came round and stopped a taxi to take me to the hospital, the driver refused when he saw all the blood. He said he didn’t want to get blood on the inside of his taxi. I had a broken jaw. Later, I joined an anti-racist march here in Brick Lane after the death of Blair Peach and I was beaten up again. This time, by the police with truncheons.
Thanks to a Jewish doctor, Dr Wootliff, a good friend of my father’s, I got the biggest break of my life. He wrote me a reference and I got a job at Alba TV manufacturers in Tabernacle St. I was fitting radiograms together and I got a penny, ha’penny for each one. I thought,’Bloody Hell! This is a production line.’ Most of my friends were white and they had already broken into skilled trades. I really wanted to be a TV repair man.
I went to an interview in Dagenham. They said, ‘Forget about the job, this area is not good for black people. Just leave now before somebody puts a knife in you.’ I got a job in Canning Town for Multibroadcast where I found it bloody hard. There were many customers when they answered the door and saw you, they wouldn’t let you in the house. It was the worst place I could imagine working. The people were all dockers and they didn’t like my face. I’d park my car and when I’d return there’d be shit on it. After six months, I quit.
In the late seventies, I was working for a TV repair company called Derwent in Streatham. There was this great guy called George, an English guy. If you brought in a broken TV and put it on the bench, he’d say, ‘Put the kettle on!’ and light a fag. Before the kettle boiled and he’d smoked the fag, the TV would be repaired. He inspired me. TV repairs were in big demand. One day I went to repair a TV and the customer’s brother was there who was also TV repairman, he worked for Visionhire. He asked me how much I earned a week, and when I told him £16, he offered me £50 a week to join his company.
I opened up my own shop here in Heneage St, Spitalfields in 1976. It used to be a sweets and paraffin shop belonging to a Mr Lewis, and I came here as a child with my father to buy sweets. It took me a year to clear out the rubbish and fix it up. I am the only Pakistani here surrounded by Bengalis. I said to them, ‘Fair enough, the country is divided but it’s nothing to do with me!’ If God don’t give me, then the Devil will give me, and I will serve the mixed community. I started with ten shillings and I have worked here for thirty-eight years. And I am grateful to the Bengalis because I am still working and it is all through word of mouth.
I believe no country gives you anything, it’s what you can give and make that counts. I bought a house out of working in this shop. If you look back at the past, all the immigrants that made money started their own businesses. Even Marks & Spencer started here in Spitalfields in Old Montague St.
I have struggled quite a bit but with Allah’s help I have got through. I am not an Asian anymore, I am more British than the bloody British.”
‘People looked at us in a different way’
‘In those days, Irish, Jews, Blacks and Asians were known as ‘dogs”
‘If God don’t give me, then the Devil will give me …’
‘With Allah’s help, I have got through …’
Master Tech, 1 Heneage St, Spitalfields, E1 5LJ
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Raju Vaidyanathan’s Brick Lane
Back of Cheshire St, 1986
“I used to climb up on the railway bridge and take photos,” explained photographer Raju Vaidyanathan when he showed me this picture which he has seen for the first time only recently even though he took it thirty years ago. A prolific taker of photos around Spitalfields, Raju possesses over forty thousand negatives of people and personalities in the neighbourhood which, after all this time, he is now beginning to print. So I went down to the Idea Store in Watney Market where Raju works to learn more about his remarkable photography.
“I was born in Brick Lane above the shop that is now called ‘This Shop Rocks,’ and I still live on the Lane. My father, Vaithy came to this country in 1949, he was brought over as one of the very first chefs to introduce Indian cooking and our family lineage is all chefs. They brought him over to be chef at the Indian embassy and the day he arrived he discovered they had already arranged a room for him and that room was on Brick Lane, and he lived there until he died.
In 1983, I managed to get hold of an old camera that someone gave me and I started taking photos. As a kid I was very poor and I knew that I was not going to be able to afford take photos, but someone said to me, ‘Instead of taking colour photos, why don’t you take black and white?’ I went to the Montefiore Centre in Hanbury St and the tutor said he would teach me how to process black and white film. So that is what I did, I am a local kid and I just started taking photos of what was happening around me, the people, the football team, the youth club – anything in Brick Lane, where I knew all the people.
Photography is my passion but I also like local history and learning about people’s lives. Sometime in the late eighties, I realised I was not just taking photographs for myself but making a visual diary of my area. I have been taking photos ever since and I always have a camera with me. I am a history collector, I have got all the Asian political leaflets and posters over the years. In the Asian community everyone knows me as the history guy and photographer
Until four years ago, I had been working until nine or ten o’clock every night and seven days a week but then they restructured my hours and insisted I had to work here full time at the Idea Store. Before, I was only working here part-time and working as a youth worker the rest of the time. Suddenly, I had time off in the evenings.
People started saying, ‘You’ve got to do something with all these photos.’ So I thought, ‘Let me see if I can start sorting out my negatives.’ I started finding lots put away in boxes and I took a course learning how to print. For the last two years, I go in once a week and print my photos and see what I have got. I bought a negative scanner and I started scanning the first two boxes of negatives. I have never seen these photos because I never had the money to print them. I just used to take the photos and process the film. So far, I have scanned about eight thousand negatives and maybe next year, once I have sorted these out, I will start scanning all the others.”
Junk on Brick Lane, 1985
Outside Ali Brothers’ grocery shop, Fashion St 1986. His daughter saw the photo and was so happy that his picture was taken at that time.
Modern Saree Centre 1985. It moved around a lot in Brick Lane before closing three years ago.
BYM ‘B’ football team at Chicksand Estate football pitch known as the ‘Ghat’ locally, 1986
108 Brick Lane, 1985. Unable to decide whether to be a café or video store, it is now a pizza shop.
‘Joi Bangla Krew’ around the Pedley Street arches. The BBC recently honoured Haroun Shamsher from Joi (third from left) and Sam Zaman from ‘State of Bengal (far left) with a music plaque on Brick Lane
Myrdle Street, 1984. Washing was hung between flats until the late nineties.
Chacha at Seven Stars pub 1985. Chacha was a Bangladeshi spiv and a good friend of my father. Seven Stars was the local for the Asian community until it closed down in 2000.
Teacher Sarah Larcombe and local youths (Zia with the two fingers) on top of the old Shoreditch Goods Station, which was the most amazing playground
Halal Meat Man on Brick Lane, 1986
Filming of ‘Revolution’ in Fournier St, 1986. The man tapping for cash was killed by some boys a few months later.
Mayor Paul Beaseley and Rajah Miah (later Councillor) open the Mela on Hanbury Street, 1985
The Queen Mother arrives at the reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery, 1986
Photographs copyright © Raju Vaidyanathan
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