Mr Pussy In Summer
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In these dreamy days of high summer, I often think of my old cat Mr Pussy
While Londoners luxuriate in the warmth of summer, I miss Mr Pussy who endured the hindrance of a fur coat, spending his languorous days stretched out upon the floor in a heat-induced stupor. As the sun reached its zenith, his activity declined and he sought the deep shadow, the cooling breeze and the bare wooden floor to stretch out and fall into a deep trance that could transport him far away to the loss of his physical being. Mr Pussy’s refined nature was such that even these testing conditions provided an opportunity for him to show grace, transcending dreamy resignation to explore an area of meditation of which he was the supreme proponent.
In the early morning and late afternoon, you would see him on the first floor window sill here in Spitalfields, taking advantage of the draught of air through the house. With his aristocratic attitude, Mr Pussy took amusement in watching the passersby from his high vantage point on the street frontage and enjoyed lapping water from his dish on the kitchen window sill at the back of the house, where in the evenings he also liked to look down upon the foxes gambolling in the yard.
Whereas in winter it was Mr Pussy’s custom to curl up in a ball to exclude drafts, in these balmy days he preferred to stretch out to maximize the air flow around his body. There was a familiar sequence to his actions, as particular as stages in yoga. Finding a sympathetic location with the advantage of cross currents and shade from direct light, at first Mr Pussy sat to consider the suitability of the circumstance before rolling onto his side and releasing the muscles in his limbs, revealing that he was irrevocably set upon the path of total relaxation.
Delighting in the sensuous moment, Mr Pussy stretched out to his maximum length of over three feet long, curling his spine and splaying his legs at angles, creating an impression of the frozen moment of a leap, just like those wooden horses on fairground rides. Extending every muscle and toe, his glinting claws unsheathed and his eyes widened gleaming gold, until the stretch reached it full extent and subsided in the manner of a wave upon the ocean, as Mr Pussy slackened his limbs to lie peacefully with heavy lids descending.
In this position that resembled a carcass on the floor, Mr Pussy could undertake his journey into dreams, apparent by his twitching eyelids and limbs as he ran through the dark forest of his feline unconscious where prey were to be found in abundance. Vulnerable as an infant, sometimes Mr Pussy cried to himself in his dream, an internal murmur of indeterminate emotion, evoking a mysterious fantasy that I could never be party to. It was somewhere beyond thought or language. I could only wonder if his arcadia was like that in Paolo Uccello’s “Hunt in the Forest” or whether Mr Pussy’s dreamscape resembled the watermeadows of the River Exe, the location of his youthful safaris.
There was another stage, beyond dreams, signalled when Mr Pussy rolled onto his back with his front paws distended like a child in the womb, almost in prayer. His back legs splayed to either side, his head tilted back, his jaw loosened and his mouth opened a little, just sufficient to release his shallow breath – and Mr Pussy was gone. Silent and inanimate, he looked like a baby and yet very old at the same time. The heat relaxed Mr Pussy’s connection to the world and he fell, he let himself go far away on a spiritual odyssey. It was somewhere deep and somewhere cool, he was out of his body, released from the fur coat at last.
Startled upon awakening from his trance, like a deep-sea diver ascending too quickly, Mr Pussy squinted at me as he recovered recognition, giving his brains a good shake, once the heat of the day had subsided. Lolloping down the stairs, still loose-limbed, he strolled out of the house into the garden and took a dust bath under a tree, spending the next hour washing it out and thereby cleansing the sticky perspiration from his fur.
Regrettably the climatic conditions that subdued Mr Pussy by day, also enlivened him by night. At first light, when the dawn chorus commenced, he stood on the floor at my bedside, scratched a little and called to me. I woke to discover two golden eyes filling my field of vision. I rolled over at my peril, because this provoked Mr Pussy to walk to the end of the bed and scratch my toes sticking out under the sheet, causing me to wake again with a cry of pain. I miss having no choice but to rise, accepting his forceful invitation to appreciate the manifold joys of early morning in summer in Spitalfields, because it was not an entirely unwelcome obligation.
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Mr Pussy Gives his First Interview
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Wonderful London’s East End
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It is my pleasure to publish these evocative pictures of the East End (with some occasionally facetious original captions) selected from the popular magazine Wonderful London edited by St John Adcock and produced by The Fleetway House in the nineteen-twenties. Most photographers were not credited – though many were distinguished talents of the day, including East End photographer William Whiffin (1879-1957).
Boys are often seen without boots or stockings, and football barefoot under such conditions has grave risks from glass or old tin cans, but there are many urchins who would rather run about barefoot.
When this narrow little dwelling in St John’s Hill, Shadwell, was first built in 1753, its inhabitants could walk in a few minutes to the meadows round Stepney or, venture further afield, to hear the cuckoo in the orchards of Poplar.
Middlesex St is still known by its old name of Petticoat Lane. Some of the goods on offer at amazingly low prices on a Sunday morning are not above suspicion of being stolen, and you may buy a watch at one end of the street and see it for sale again by the time you reach reach the other.
A vanished theatre on the borders of Hoxton, just before demolition, photographed by William Whiffin. In 1838, a tea garden by the name of ‘the Eagle Tavern’ was put up in Shepherdess Walk in the City Rd near the ‘Shepherd & Shepherdess,’ a similar establishment founded at the beginning of the same century. Melodramas such as ‘The Lights ‘O London’ and entertainments like ‘The Secrets of the Harem,’ were also given. In 1882, General Booth turned the place into a Meeting Hall for his Salvation Army. There is little suggestion of the pastoral about Shepherdess Walk now.
In the East End and all over the poorer parts of London, a strange kind of establishment, half booth, half shop, is common and particularly popular with greengrocers. Old packing cases are the foundation of a slope of fruit which begins unpleasantly near the level of the pavement and ends in the recess behind the dingy awning. At night, the buttresses of vegetables are withdrawn into shelter.
Old shop front in Bow photographed by William Whiffin. Pawnbroking, once as decorous as banking, has fallen from the high estate in the vicinity of Lombard St. Now, combined instead with the sale of secondhand jewellery, furniture and hundred other commodities, it is apt to seek the corners of the meaner streets.
A water tank covered by a plank in a backyard among the slums is an unlikely place for a stage, but an undaunted admirer of that great Cockney humorist, Charlie Chaplin, is holding his audience with an imitation of the well-known gestures with which the famous comic actor indicates the care-free-though-down-and-out view of life which he has immortalised.
Old shop front in Poplar photographed by William Whiffin
An old charity school for girl and boy down at Wapping founded in 1704. The present building dates from 1760 and the school is supported by voluntary subscriptions. The school provided for the ‘putting out of apprentices’ and for clothing the pupils.
The hunt for bargains in Shoreditch. A glamour surrounds the rickety coster’s barrow which supports a few dozens of books. But, to tell the truth, the organisation of the big shops is now so efficient that the chances of finding anything good at these open air book markets may have long odds laid against it.
The landsman’s conception of a sailing vessel, with all its complex of standing and running rigging that serves mast and sail with ordered efficiency, is apt for a shock when he sees a Thames barge by a dockside. The endless coils and loops of rope of different thickness, the length of chain and the litter of brooms, buckets, fenders and pieces of canvas, seem to be in the most insuperable confusion.
Gloom and grime in Chinatown. Pennyfields runs from West India Dock Rd to Poplar High St. A Chinese restaurant on the corner and a few Chinese and European clothes are all that is to be seen in the daytime.
The gem of Cornhill, Birches, where it stood for two hundred years. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the brothers Adam erected its beautiful shop front. Within were old bills of fare printed on satin, a silver tureen fashioned to the likeness of a turtle and many other curious odd-flavoured things. Birches have catered for the inspired feasting of the City Companies and Guilds for two centuries but now this shop has moved to Old Broad St and, instead of Adam, we are to have Art Nouveau ferro-concrete.
It is doubtful if the Borough Council of Poplar had any notion, when they supplied the district with water carts, that the supplementary use pictured in this photograph by William Whiffin would be made of them. Given a complacent driver, there is no reason why these children should not go on for miles.
Grime and gloom in St George’s St photographed by William Whiffin. St George’s St used to be the famous Ratcliff Highway and runs from East Smithfield to Shadwell High St. It is a maritime street and contains various establishments, religious and otherwise, which cater for the sailor.
River Lea at Bow Bridge photographed by William Whiffin. On the right are Bow flour mills, while to the left, beyond the bridge, a large brewery is seen.
A view of Curtain Rd photographed by William Whiffin, famed for its cabinet makers. It runs from Worship St – a turning to the left when walking along Norton Folgate towards Shoreditch High St – to Old St. Curtain Rd got its name from a curtain wall, once part of the outworks of the city’s fortifications.
Fish porters of Billingsgate gathered around consignments lately arrived from the coast. At one time, smacks brought all the fish sold in the market and were unloaded at Billingsgate Wharf, said to be the oldest in London.
Crosby Hall as it stood in Bishopsgate. Alderman Sir John Crosby, a wealthy grocer, got the lease of some ground off Bishopsgate in 1466 from Alice Ashfield, Prioress of St Helen’s, at a rent of eleven pounds, six shillings and eightpence per annum, and built Crosby Hall there. It came into the possession of Sir Thomas More around 1518 and by 1638 it was in the hands of the East India Company, but in 1910 it was taken down and re-erected in Cheyne Walk.
Whatever their relations with the Constable may come to be in later life, the children of the East End, in their early days, are quite willing to use his protection at wide street crossings.
There is no more important work in the great cities than the amelioration of the slum child’s lot. Many East End children have never been beyond their own disease-ridden courts and dingy streets that form their playground.
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Liverpool St Station In The 20th Century & Beyond
John Betjeman on Liverpool St Station c1961, photograph by David Sim
If you have not yet objected to the monstrous block they want to plonk on top of Liverpool St St Station, the deadline is 4th July.
When I wrote a week ago there were only 180 objections versus 613 comments in favour but – thanks to you the readers of Spitalfields Life – there are now 623 objections versus 659 comments in favour. This is astonishing progress.
Yet if we are to stop this appalling development, we have to far surpass those comments in favour and we have until next Friday to do this. Please encourage your friends, family, neighbours and colleagues to object.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY
This is the Liverpool St Station of living memory – the station as I first knew it – recorded in these splendid photographs from the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute.
A vital transport hub through two world wars and, most significantly, the point of arrival for the Kindertransport, children fleeing nazi Germany, this is the station that John Betjeman fought to save, winning a landmark conservation battle which gave us the sensitively restored station of recent years.
At the end of this post, I append my photographs of the beautiful station as we know it today with its luminous marble floor refracting the morning light from the lancet windows high above.
Glass was removed from the roof in World War II
Photograph by Malcolm Tremain
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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George Fuest, Baker
I am delighted to announce that Spitalfields baker, George Fuest of POPULATIONS BAKERY has opened his first bakery shop this week, where you can buy his creations over the counter, as part of CORNER SHOP at 7 Arundel St, WC2R 3DA.
George Fuest by Patricia Niven
A while ago, I was intrigued to hear of a baker running a solo bakery from a shed in the backyard of a house in Fournier St by the name of Populations Bakery. Orders could only placed online, I learnt, and collected from the front door direct from the baker George Fuest on Friday. So in January I ordered Galettes des Rois, without any expectation but as a treat to lift my spirits in the first weeks of New Year, only to be astonished by the sophistication and accomplishment of these sweet treats.
Over the year, a stream of delights followed including a magnificent Simnel cake at Easter and an unforgettable birthday cake – all evidence of a truly outstanding talent in baking. In December, I happened to meet George one cold morning in the cycle lane in Westminster just below Big Ben as it struck nine. He was on his way to make deliveries but he stopped his bike and handed me a mince pie. It was my first Christmas moment and was spoiled because I could imagine any other being as good as George’s.
Contributing photographer Patricia Niven & I joined George for a session in his bakery to see for ourselves what goes on. George baked loaves of bread, croissants, danish pastries and pains au chocolate with an ease which belied his precision and expert judgement, while he explained to us how and why he conjured his bakery into being in the house where he grew up.
“Even before Lockdown I used to make a lot of bread and pastries. When I left university, I was trying to start a website and to finance that I worked as bike courier for Little Bread Pedlar delivering pastries to coffee shops. That was when I realised I just really enjoyed eating pastries and it inspired me to start baking.
I started working at a coffee shop as a barista because I wanted to get into the coffee industry. But then, when Lockdown happened, I started baking a lot more regularly and delivering to friends and family, mostly as a way to have something to do, to get out on my bike and go and see people, delivering supplies. Then I did some charity fundraisers because people wanted to pay for my pastries but I did not think they were good enough, so I asked people to make donations to charity rather than take money from them. And it grew from there.
I was attracted to the mission of a bakery employing heritage grains, supporting farmers that are focussing on regenerative agricultural practices. I realised I really wanted to be a baker. I am interested in being the middle person between the farmer and the customer, and promoting this approach to baking.
During Lockdown I could get on my bike and deliver direct. I used to bake though the early hours of the morning and then be cycling around London for six or seven hours a day. Now people come and collect, and I have some drop-off points around London.
I am self taught though a lot of trial and error, and a lot of reading recipes. And I did work experience at Flore Bakery in Bermondsey and at Landrace Bakery in Bath and I did holiday cover at Toad Bakery in Camberwell. I learnt a lot that way.
When you work with specialty grain, there is a lot of trial and error anyway because you can only learn how to interpret the flour by working with it. With modern cereals, you get this complete consistency that industrial processes require – they want the baking to be the same every time.
That is not the case with heritage grain where you can get different characteristics from field to field, so every sack of flour can be quite different which means you are always learning – as a baker – the properties of the grain and what you can do with it. The baking tastes better. In commercial production, there is no requirement for flavour. Modern wheat is roller milled which strips off a lot of elements of the grain but, with stoneground, the entire grain is ground.
I call my bakery Populations because it focusses on genetically diverse wheat. With modern wheat you get a monoculture where every plant is genetically identical which makes them vulnerable to infections and pests, so they require a lot of pesticides and herbicides which are oil-based chemicals. With populations-diverse wheat, you have a blend of many different wheats which are grown in the same field and the seeds saved, and the process is repeated again and again. This creates a complete genetic diversity in the crop and it will be different in every part of the country because it will adapt to wherever it is grown.
This may sound like the past, employing traditional methods and not using modern fertilisers, but it is also the future because it is the way crops need to be grown to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and start regenerating the land.
When I am baking, it is a lot of hours work. When I started out, I did not have many customers so I would be cycling seventy kilometres a day to deliver bread and pastries, after five or six hours of baking beforehand. It kept me fit but it was not really sustainable.
I would love to open a community-based coffee shop and bakery, and I am also enjoying small scale wholesale. This Christmas I am making mince pies for ten select coffee shops in London and it is lovely to get the feedback.
There are so many things I enjoy about this work. I love the challenge of woking with different grains and learning new methods. I still enjoy eating the pastries and my bread too!.”
Sough dough loaves
Croissants
Pains au chocolate
George Fuest
Photographs © Patricia Niven
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Tiles By William Godwin Of Lugwardine
There is spot where my eyes fall as I enter the house between the front door and the foot of the stair, where I always felt there was something missing and it was only when I visited Bow Church to admire C R Ashbee’s restoration work that I realised there would once have been floor tiles in my entrance way. It was a notion enforced when I noticed some medieval encaustic tiles at Charterhouse and began to research the possible nature of the missing tiles from my house.
In 1852, William Godwin began creating gothic tiles by the encaustic process century at his factory at Lugwardine in Herefordshire and became one of the leading manufacturers in the nineteenth century, supplying the demand for churches, railway stations, schools, municipal buildings and umpteen suburban villas. Inevitably, some of these tiles have broken over the time and millions have been thrown out as demolition and the desire for modernity have escalated.
So I decided to create a floor with the odd tiles that no-one else wants, bringing together tiles that once belonged to whole floors of matching design, now destroyed, and give them a new home in my house. Oftentimes, I bought broken or chipped ones and paid very little for each one – but I hope you will agree that together their effect is magnificent.
Encaustic tiled floor designed by C R Ashbee for Bow Church using Godwin tiles
Medieval encaustic tiles at the bricked-up entrance to Charterhouse in Smithfield
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At The Monument
Novelist Kate Griffin returns to The Monument, half a century after her first visit
If you lay The Monument on its side to the West, the flame hits the spot in Pudding Lane where the fire broke out in Mr Farriner’s bakery during the early hours of 2nd September, 1666.
One of my earliest London memories is climbing to the top of The Monument with my dad when I was around four years old. I remember clearly pushing through the turnstile and dodging through people’s legs to reach the enticing black marble staircase that spiralled up through the centre of the column.
I could not wait to get to the top and see the view. Once we were up there and my dad lifted me onto his shoulders – so that I was even higher than everyone around us on the narrow stone platform – the thrill was electrifying. Yet I doubt ‘Health & Safety’ would allow that these days, even though the top of The Monument is now securely caged as a protection against pigeons, and a deterrent to potential suicides. (There were a few of those in the past.)
When I was four, I raced up those three hundred and eleven stairs but returning – in the company of photographer Alex Pink – half a century years later, I make the ascent at a much more leisurely pace. In fact, I stop several times and lean against the curved wall of cool Portland stone. Ostensibly, this is to allow an excited party of school children to pass as they loop back down the narrow stairs but, actually, I pause because the muscles in my legs are crying out for mercy and I am beginning to wonder if there could be an oxygen cylinder around the next turn of the stair.
Guide Mandy Thurkle grins as I gasp for breath. “You could say it keeps us fit. There are always two of us here on duty and, between us, we have to go up four times a day to make our regular checks. They say the calories you’ve burned off when you reach the top is the equivalent of a Mars Bar – not that I’m tempted. I’m not that keen on them.” She stands aside in the narrow entrance through the plinth as another party of school children jostles into the little atrium at the foot of the stairwell. There is an ‘ooh’ of excitement as they cluster together and crane their necks to look up at the stone steps coiling above them. “I love working here,” Mandy says, “I love the interaction with the visitors, seeing their reactions and answering their questions – the children’s are usually the best.”
Built to commemorate the rebuilding of the City after the Great Fire of London in 1666, The Monument – still the tallest isolated stone column in the world – attracts more than 220,000 visitors a year. Designed by Robert Hooke under the supervision of Christopher Wren, it was one of the first visitor attractions in London to admit paying entrants. Back in the eighteenth century, early wardens and their families actually lived in the cell-like basement beneath the massive plinth. This room was originally designed to house Hooke’s astronomical observatory – he dreamed of using the new building as a giant telescope while Wren saw it as a useful place to conduct his gravity experiments.
It is easy to imagine those first wardens welcoming a succession of bewigged and patch-faced sightseers eager to view the newly-rising city from the finest vantage point. Once, The Monument was a towering landmark, clearly visible from any angle in the City, now that it is confined by ugly, boxy offices, its former significance is obscured by walls of glass and concrete. In any other great European capital, the little piazza in which it stands would become a destination in itself, flanked by coffee shops or smart boutiques, but these days you come upon this extraordinary building almost accidentally.
French-born Nathalie Rebillon-Lopez, Monument Assistant Exhibition Manager, agrees, “In France, I worked for the equivalent of English Heritage and they would never have allowed a building like this to be hemmed in. There is a rule that development cannot take place within fifty metres of an important site.” She shrugs, “But then, Paris is sometimes like a giant museum. You have to move with the times and things have to change. I often think London is good at that – it is very open to creativity and eclecticism, it is always alive.”
Of course, Nathalie is right but as we speak in the little paved square it is hard not to feel oppressed by the sheer scale of the new ‘Walkie Talkie’ building lumbering ever upwards in the streets beyond. Where The Monument is all about elegant neo-classical balance, the ‘Walkie Talkie’ is a cumbersome affront to the skyline – a visual joke that is not very funny. Monument guide Mandy, who has worked at the building and at its sister attraction Tower Bridge for twenty-three years, shares my misgivings. “I get a little bit upset at the top sometimes,” she confides, “I look down and see all the tiny old churches and their spires completely lost amongst the new buildings and it seems wrong.”
Not surprisingly, given that the Great Fire of London is a component of Key Stage One on the national curriculum, many of The Monument’s visitors today are under ten-years-old. They all receive a certificate on leaving to prove that they have been to the top. “Usually they are very well behaved,” says Nathalie approvingly,“We have to monitor stickers on the walls and things like chewing gum and even the odd bit of graffiti, but generally with those unwelcome additions, adults are more likely to be the offenders!”
The interior of The Monument – all two hundred and two feet of it – is cleaned by a team of regulars who come in three times a week at night when the visitors are gone. They must be the fittest cleaning crew in London! “They use simple mops and buckets to clean the marble stairs from top to bottom,” Nathalie explains, “We have to treat the building very, very gently because it is Grade One listed. We cannot make any changes or alterations without consulting English Heritage – even our turnstile, which we no longer use, is listed.”
When I first visited The Monument back in the sixties, it was black with soot and pollution. Today, after the major conservation work, the creamy Portland stone gleams almost as brightly as the gilded flame at the very top.
“We welcome visitors from all over the world and a surprising number of Londoners come here too,” says Nathalie, “It’s important to people – it’s part of the fabric of the city. It has a good feeling and it’s a very romantic place. For a fee, we allow people to come here after hours and propose with the whole of London spread out below them. Imagine that!” Standing on the viewing platform at the very top of the column, it is not hard to see why that would be appealing. Despite the development taking place in every direction, the view is simply breathtaking. Here at the very heart of old London you can look down on the streets below and still see, quite clearly, the imprint of the ancient, incinerated city that The Monument was built to commemorate.
Once I manage to catch my breath, I ask if people ever give up before they reach the top and the spectacular view. Nathalie laughs, “That’s quite rare. Once they’ve started most people are very determined. Just occasionally we might have a visitor who can’t make it because of vertigo, but we always give them a refund.”
For my money, whether you are a tourist or native, the best four-pounds-fifty you could possibly spend in the City of London is the the entry fee to The Monument. And if you visited regularly you could ditch the gym membership!
“my legs are crying out for mercy”
The view from the top photographed by Alex Pink
The view from the top photographed fifty years ago by Roland Collins
The Monument seen from Billingsgate.
In Pudding Lane
Mandy Thurkle –“You could say it keeps us fit. There are always two of us here on duty and, between us, we have to go up four times a day to make our regular checks.”
Sean Thompson-Patterson, first day of work at The Monument.
The reclining woman on the left is the City ‘injured by fire.’ The beehive at her feet represents the industry that will help to rebuild the City. The winged creature behind her is Time which will help the City to regain her feet again. Charles II stands on the right in a Roman breastplate, putting things to rights. At his feet Envy is disappearing into a hole, while Peace and Plenty float on a cloud above the scene.
Photographs copyright © Alex Pink
The Monument, Fish St Hill, EC3R 6DB . Open daily. Summer (April – September) 9:30am – 6pm. Winter (October -March) 9:30am – 5:30pm.
In The Lavender Fields Of Surrey
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I cannot imagine a more relaxing way to enjoy a sunny English summer afternoon than a walk through a field of lavender. Observe the subtle tones of blue, extending like a mist to the horizon and rippling like the surface of the sea as the wind passes over. Inhale the pungent fragrance carried on the breeze. Delight in the orange butterflies dancing over the plants. Spot the pheasants scuttling away and – if you are as lucky as I was – encounter a red fox stalking the game birds through the forest of lavender. What an astonishing colour contrast his glossy russet pelt made as he disappeared into the haze of blue and green plants.
Lavender has been grown on the Surrey Downs for centuries and sold in summer upon the streets of the capital by itinerant traders. The aromatic properties and medicinal applications of lavender have always been appreciated, with each year’s new crop signalling the arrival of summer in London.
The lavender growing tradition in Surrey is kept alive by Mayfield Lavender in Banstead where visitors may stroll through fields of different varieties and then enjoy lavender ice cream or a cream tea with a lavender scone afterwards, before returning home laden with lavender pillows, soap, honey and oil.
Let me confess, I had given up on lavender – it had become the smell most redolent of sanitary cleaning products. But now I have learnt to distinguish between the different varieties and found a preference for a delicately-fragranced English lavender by the name of Folgate, I have rediscovered it again. My entire house is scented with it and the soporific qualities are evident. At the end of that sunny afternoon, when I returned from my excursion to the lavender fields of Surrey, I sat down in my armchair and did not awake again until supper time.
‘Six bunches a penny, sweet lavender!’ is the cry that invites in the street the purchasers of this cheap and pleasant perfume. A considerable quantity of the shrub is sold to the middling-classes of the inhabitants, who are fond of placing lavender among their linen – the scent of which conquers that of the soap used in washing. – William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders, 1804
‘Delight in the orange butterflies dancing over the plants…’
Thomas Rowlandson’s Characteristic Series of the Lower Orders, 1820
‘Six Bunches a-Penny, Sweet Lavender – Six Bunches a-Penny, Sweet Blooming Lavender’ from Luke Clennell’s London Melodies, 1812
‘Spot the pheasants scuttling away…’
From Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Card issued with Grenadier Cigarettes in 1902
WWI veteran selling lavender bags by Julius Mendes Price, 1919
Yardley issued Old English Lavender talcum powder tins from 1913 incorporating Francis Wheatley’s flower seller of 1792
Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
