Stan Jones Of Mile End
Stan Jones
Such has been the movement of people and the destruction and reconstruction of neighbourhoods in the last century that I often wonder if anyone at all is left here from the old East End. So you can imagine my delight when I met Stan Jones of Mile End who has lived in his house for the last eighty years, moving there at the age of ten from a nearby street.
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I were enchanted to be welcomed by Stan to his extraordinary home where nothing has ever been thrown away. Every inch of the house and garden has found its ideal use in the last eight decades and Stan is a happy man living in his beloved home that is also the repository of his family history.
Fortunately for us Stan has been taking photographs all this time, starting out in the days of glass plate negatives, and below you can see a few examples of his handiwork. Famously, Stan photographed the exterior of his house from the Coronation in 1953 and his picture was published in The Times, which has led to return visits by the daily newspapers on subsequent occasions of national celebration to record Stan’s unchanging decorations on the front of his unaltered house.
Most inspiring to me was Stan’s sense of modest satisfaction with his existence in his small house backing onto the railway line. Mercifully untroubled by personal ambition, Stan has immersed himself in domesticity and creative pastimes, and enjoyed fulfilment at the centre of his intimate community over the past eighty years. Such is his contentment that not even a World War with bombs dropping from the sky could drive Stan out of his home. Stan never had any desire to go anywhere else because he found that all which life has to offer may be discovered in a back street in Mile End.
“I was born nearby in Coutts Rd in 1929 and I came here with my mother and father in March 1939, so I have lived in this house for eighty years. I have no brothers or sisters and I never married. I did have one cousin until last December, but he has gone now and my closest relative is his daughter who lives in Hornchurch.
My mother was Ethel and father was Arthur, they were both from Stepney. My grandparents all lived in Stepney, just across the other side of Mile End Road. My mother was one week older than my father but they both passed away within nine weeks of each other in 1978, when they were seventy-five.
My father was an engineer, repairing steam lorries, until he got a job with the council as mace bearer to the Mayor. Also he was personal messenger to the Town Clerk of Stepney, all through the war he carried messages around on a bike.
My mother was a machinist until the day she got married, then she never went out to work any more. Before fridges and freezers, women had to go out shopping every day to buy food and look after the children. He had to work to feed her, keep her in clothes and pay the rent, which was about a pound a week. That was their life.
I had a happy childhood but it was very lonely, I never had friends, I always had hobbies indoors. I hardly got any education. I only went to Malmesbury Rd School for a few months before the war started and the schools shut down. Most children were evacuated but I never went away, I did not want to. I was here right through the war. I went back to school for about six months after the war and that was my education because you left school at fourteen in those days. I must have educated myself because I did not have much schooling.
On the first night of the air raids, a row of houses down this road got a direct hit. Most nights, I was in the Anderson shelter with my mother. We were down there when the bomb fell just along the road and when a flying bomb hit the railway bridge and ripped it in half and the two halves were lying in the road. I must have been frightened but I cannot remember.
My father did not go into the army because the Town Clerk was a barrister and made him exempt. Instead, he was in the Home Guard out on duty at the Blackwall Tunnel or wherever.
My mother was not well after the war and she was not keen to push me in to work, so I was about fifteen before I started work at a shopfitters in Commercial St. I was with them for forty-eight years, that was my working life. I started in packing, then became a despatch manager and finally warehouse manager, keeping check of stock.
I had a Brownie box camera, and I took pictures if we went out for a day at the seaside and at local celebrations. My photograph of this house decorated for the Coronation in 1953 was published in The Times. But I did not go out a lot as I say, because a lot of my photography was not actually taking pictures. I did a lot of black and white processing for other people. I had a dark room upstairs and, in summer, when people were taking photos I was the one upstairs developing their films. This was all for neighbours, people at work, you know. If they took them to the chemist, they would have to wait a week to get them back, but they got them back next morning from me!
Never being married, I was not pushed into a better paid job. In 1946 my first week’s wages were £2.50 and a rise was twelve and a half pence. It improved as the years went on, although not top wages. I never had a pension scheme but, for my loyalty, they gave me a monthly allowance.
I am very happy here in this house. Most of the others have been extended, but this one is as it was built.”
Stan at home
Arthur & Ethel Jones at their wedding on Christmas Day in 1928
Ethel at Brighton in the thirties
Arthur with Stan at Brighton in the thirties
Stan in his pedal car in the thirties
Stan’s photograph of his childhood dog
Stan’s photograph of a train at the end of his garden – ‘Sometimes our cats strayed onto the railway tracks and never came back, one returned without a tail!’
Arthur Jones stands at the centre of this group of steam lorry drivers in the thirties
Arthur Jones escorts the Mayor of Stepney and King George the Sixth with the Queen Mother to visit the bombing of Hughes Mansions in Vallance Rd
The Mayor’s chauffeur comes to pick up Arthur for his mace-bearing duties
Arthur stand on the left as Clement Attlee speaks
Arthur Jones leads the procession through Stepney to St Mary & St Michaels Church
Ethel & Arthur Jones in the back garden
Stan shows the glass plate of his famous photograph
Stan’s photograph of his parents in 1953 that was published in The Times
Stan’s recent decorations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee
Stan Jones outside his house today
Stan’s photograph of entertainment for the Coronation Party in Mile End, 1953
Stan’s photograph of the conga at the Coronation Party in Mile End, 1953
Stan’s photograph of a display at the shopfitters where he worked
Stan’s photograph of mannequins
Stan as a youth
Ethel & Arthur Jones in later years
Stan Jones in his garden today
Portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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The Subtle Art Of Glynn Boyd Harte
Who remembers Glynn Boyd Harte (1948-2003)? Doreen Fletcher told me that it was his superlative coloured pencil drawings that inspired her essays in this medium. I remember seeing his work at the Francis Kyle Gallery and being fascinated by his chic still lifes of radishes, wine glasses and packets of Gauloise Bleu on intricate woven French tablecloths. For years, I cherished postcards of these images on my book shelf.
Neil Jennings has organised a small show of Glynn Boyd Harte’s drawings, watercolours and lithographs, PACKETS & PLACES, at the Art Workers’ Guild in Bloomsbury from Sunday 22nd until Friday 4th October, which offers the welcome opportunity to reacquaint yourself with this flamboyant master of the crayon, who died too soon in 2003.
The Blackfriar, Queen Victoria St, EC4
The Reuters & Press Association Building, 85 Fleet St
Upper St sub-station, Angel, Islington
Images copyright © Estate of Glynn Boyd Harte
Why Facadism Is Happening
In today’s extract from my forthcoming book THE CREEPING PLAGUE OF GHASTLY FACADISM I explore the reasons behind the recent proliferation of facadism in the capital.
I still need to raise another £3,500 to publish my book next month, so I ask you to search down the back of the sofa and in your coat pockets to help me in this last push to reach the total. Click here to help
You can also support publication by ordering a copy in advance for £15. Click here to preorder
Steel frame in Smithfield
London is a city that has evolved through waves of redevelopment, often after catastrophes such the Great Fire and the Blitz. In this century, we have seen a new wave of development driven by overseas investment, reflecting London’s status as a global metropolis and the willingness of our city fathers to accept overseas investment without asking too many questions.
Our government chooses to encourage the development and construction industries by zero-rating new construction for VAT, whereas the renovation or repair of existing buildings is taxed. Thus the destruction of old buildings is incentivised financially, while the reuse and repurposing of buildings is discouraged. This irresponsible policy is directly in opposition to environmental concerns and reflects a preference for short-term economic gain regardless of long-term consequences.
In this sense, the destruction of our heritage is government policy. It has been very disappointing to witness how Historic England, the government’s heritage agency, has been on the wrong side of too many important London planning battles in recent years, advocating – or at least making no objection to – the destruction of Smithfield General Market, the historic terrace at Kings College in the Strand, the Marquis of Lansdowne in Dalston and Norton Folgate in Spitalfields, as well as the loss of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a working foundry.
Over recent decades, traditional centres of affluence in the capital such as the City of London and the West End have expanded into neighbouring areas such as Spitalfields, Soho and Southwark, characterised by the presence of old buildings and designated as Conservation Areas. Almost all the buildings featured in my book are in these areas.
In Conservation Areas, developers come up against restrictions upon redevelopment yet the escalating land values make them attractive propositions for new buildings. When developers acquire sites in these areas, they hope to demolish the old buildings in order to build the largest new buildings possible, but they come against resistance. Conservations Areas extend a degree of protection to the buildings within their boundaries, and historical significance or listed status can lead to development proposals being rejected by local councils.
When this happens, developers can appeal to the government’s Planning Inspectorate or lobby the Mayor of London or the Secretary of State to overturn the decision. Mostly, a compromise is sought. The council insists that the façade of the building must be retained and this option is backed by the government, who permit a new development to be zero-rated for VAT if retention of the façade is a condition of planning permission granted by the local authority.
Thus the government’s legislative structure supports the practice of façadism just as the intricate cages of steel girders support the façades in my book.
Steel frame in Southwark
Steel frame in Mayfair
Steel frame in Hyde Park
Steel frame in Smithfield
Steel frame in Shepherds Bush
Steel frame in Archway
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A COPY FOR £15
“As if I were being poked repeatedly in the eye with a blunt stick, I cannot avoid becoming increasingly aware of a painfully cynical trend in London architecture which threatens to turn the city into the backlot of an abandoned movie studio.”
The Gentle Author presents a humorous analysis of facadism – the unfortunate practice of destroying an old building apart from the front wall and constructing a new building behind it – revealing why it is happening and what it means.
As this bizarre architectural fad has spread across the capital, The Gentle Author has photographed the most notorious examples, collecting an astonishing gallery of images guaranteed to inspire both laughter and horror in equal measure.
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At Malplaquet House
Celebrating our tenth anniversary with favourite stories from the first decade
Photographer Philippe Debeerst sent me these splendid pictures which are accompanied by my own account of a visit to Malplaquet House.
Walking East from Spitalfields down the Mile End Rd, I arrived at the gateway surmounted by two stone eagles and reached through the iron gate to pull on a tenuous bell cord, before casting my eyes up at Malplaquet House.
Hovering nervously on the dusty pavement with the traffic roaring around my ears, I looked through the railings into the overgrown garden and beyond to the dark windows enclosing the secrets of this majestic four storey mansion (completed in 1742 by Thomas Andrews). Here I recognised a moment of anticipation comparable to that experienced by Pip, standing at the gate of Satis House before being admitted to meet Miss Havisham. Let me admit, for years I have paused to peek through the railings, but I never had the courage to ring the bell at Malplaquet House before.
Ushered through the gate, up the garden path and through the door, I was not disappointed to enter the hallway that I had dreamed of, discovering it thickly lined with stags’ heads, reliefs, and antiquarian fragments, including a cast of the hieroglyphic inscription from between the front paws of the sphinx. Here my bright-eyed host, Tim Knox, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, introduced me to landscape gardener Todd Longstaffe-Gowan with whom he restored the house. In 1998, when they bought Malplaquet House from the Spitalfields Trust, the edifice had not been inhabited in over a century, and there were two shops,“F.W. Woodruff & Co Ltd, Printers Engineers” and “Instant Typewriter Repairs,” extending through the current front garden to the street.
Yet this single-minded pair recklessly embraced the opportunity of living in a building site for the next five years, repairing the ancient fabric, removing modern accretions and tactfully reinstating missing elements – all for the sake of bringing one of London’s long-forgotten mansions back. Today their interventions are barely apparent, and when Tim led me into his Regency dining room, as created in the seventeen-nineties by the brewer Henry Charrington and painted an appetising arsenic green, I found it difficult to believe this had once been a typewriter repair shop. Everywhere, original paintwork and worn surfaces have been preserved, idiosyncratic details and textures which record the passage of people through the house and ensure the soul of the place lingers on. The success of the restoration is that every space feels natural and, as you walk from one room to another, each has its own identity and proportion, as if it were always like this.
By December 1999, the shops had been almost entirely removed leaving just their facades standing on the street, concealing the garden which had already been planted and the front wall of the house which was repaired, with windows and front door in place. Then, on Christmas Eve an exceptionally powerful wind blew down the Mile End Rd, and Tim woke in the night to an almighty “bang,” to discover that in a transformation worthy of pantomime, some passing yuletide spirit had thrown the shopfronts down into the street to reveal Malplaquet House restored. It was a suitably dramatic coup, because today the house more than lives up to its spectacular theatrical debut – it is some kind of curious masterpiece.
I hope Tim will forgive me if I confess that while he outlined the engaging history of the house with professional eloquence – as we sipped tea in the first floor drawing-room – my eyes wandered to the mountain goat under the table eyeing me suspiciously. Similarly, in the drawing-room, my attention strayed from the finer points of the architectural detail towards the ostrich skeleton in the corner.
As even a cursory glance at the photos will reveal, Tim & Todd are ferocious collectors, a compulsion that can be traced back to childhoods spent in Fiji and the West Indies. They have delighted in the opportunities Malplaquet House provides to display and expand their vast collection of ethnographic, historical, architectural and religious artefacts, natural history specimens and old master paintings. Consequently, as Tim kindly led me from one room to another, up and down stairs, through closets, opening cupboards in passing, directing my gaze this way and that, while continuously explaining the renovation, pointing out the features and giving historical context, I could do little but nod and exclaim in superlatives that grew increasingly feeble in the face of the overwhelming phantasmagoric detail of his collection.
Yet he confessed how fascinated he is by the everyday life of the Mile End Rd and the taxi office across the road that has remained open night and day since he first came to live here, before we walked into the walled yard at the rear, canopied by three-hundred-year-old tree ferns, and wondered at the echoing sound of a large community of sparrows that have made their home in this green oasis. It is a paradox of submitting to the spell of this remarkable house that the familiar external world is rendered exotic by comparison.
I have been in older houses and grander houses, but Malplaquet House has something beyond history and style, it has pervasive atmosphere. It has mystery. It has romance. You could get lost in there. When I came to leave, I shook hands with Tim and lingered, reluctant to move, because Malplaquet House held me spellbound. Even after my brief visit, I did not want to leave, so Tim walked with me through the garden into the street to say farewell, in a private rehearsal for his own eventual departure from Malplaquet House one day.
Photographs copyright © Philippe Debeerst
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The Crow Stone & The London Stone
I am delighted to publish this extract from A London Inheritance – written by a graduate of my blog course who is celebrating over five years of publishing posts online. Follow A LONDON INHERITANCE, A Private History of a Public City
I am now taking bookings for the next course HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on November 9th & 10th. Come to Spitalfields and spend a weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches from Leila’s Cafe, eat cakes baked to historic recipes by Townhouse and learn how to write your own blog. Click here for details
If you are graduate of my course and you would like me to feature your blog, please drop me a line.
The Crow Stone
This summer I finally visited two places I wanted to explore for years – locations that hold evidence of the City of London’s original jurisdiction over the River Thames, dating from when the City purchased it from Richard I in 1197. The exact powers of the City and their ability to apply them to the Thames and Medway were frequently in dispute, yet the City claimed control of the estuary until the nineteenth century.
A pair of stone obelisks were set up as a physical markers for a line crossing the river from west of Southend to Yantlet Creek on the Isle of Grain, marking the extent of the City’s legal powers. These stones are still in place, so I set out to visit both.
My first visit was to the Crow Stone on the north bank. It was easy. I walked over the embankment that forms the sea wall and, providing you have timed the tide correctly, the Crow Stone can be seen a short distance out from the beach.
The earliest evidence of a stone is from 1755, but the date on the current stone is 1836. Carved on the Crow Stone are the names of the Lord Mayor, Alderman and Sheriff who once demonstrated their control of the river by inspecting the condition of the stones, when such visits were a good excuse for a party, as the Illustrated London News describes –
“Thursday July 12th 1849, as Conservator of the River Thames, on behalf of the City of London, by prescription and usage from time immemorial, the Lord Mayor directed the Water Bailiff, as sub-conservator, to cause his name and the date of his visit to be inscribed on the boundary stone. The Lord Mayor then drank ‘God preserve the City of London’, the inscription on the ancient stone, and after distributing coins and wine to the spectators, the civic party returned to the steamer. The stone itself was in the water, so that it had to be reached in boats. The scramble for the money was a rumbustious affair.”
The earliest known boundary marker stone at Southend dates from 1755 and was removed from its original position next to the 1836 stone in 1950, when it was relocated to Priory Park in Southend. This stone really does look like it has spent two hundred years standing in the Thames Estuary, battered by the wind and the daily movement of the tides.
Next I wanted to see the London Stone on the south bank at Yantlet Creek on the Isle of Grain in Kent. Parts of the creek have now silted up so, while difficult to get to, the Isle of Grain is not strictly an island.
The London Stone is not easy to get to as there are no footpaths and to the east is a large danger area which was once a military firing range. My only route was to walk across Yantlet Creek at low tide, even if free time and tide times do not conspire to make life easy.
Yet the 4:00 am start was worth it because I arrived on the edge of Yantlet Creek at 6:15am. Low tide was just before 7:00am, so – hopefully – I had enough time to get across to the London Stone and return again before the tide started to rise in Yantlet Creek.
There is a bridleway that leads across flat pasture to where the land rises up to a footpath which runs along the top of the sea wall. As I walked, birds flew up from the surrounding grassland and their’s was a constant cry on the mud flats. Walking around to the edge of the Yantlet Creek, it was starting to look worryingly wide. Here I was able to find a way down the embankment, which was muddy, covered in seaweed and rather slippery, but I was able to cross over to the opposite shore.
It was just before low tide and water was running out from Yantlet Creek towards the estuary. I could see how deep the water would be when the tide came in again and the mud flats meant the tide came in rapidly and without warning.
The shore was sand and stone, providing a firm path to the London Stone which is a short distance out from the beach. It had been built on a platform with a raised stone pathway providing easy access without having to venture into the mud. Arriving at the London Stone at 6:45am as the sun rose over the Thames Estuary, in such an isolated location, was magical.
The City Press from September 1858 indicates the origin of the current stone – “During the past week, the Conservators of the River Thames visited the eastern limits of the Port of London. The ancient boundary stone near Yantlet Creek was found completely embedded in sand and shell. It is the intention of the Conservators, we understand, to place a new stone on the site of the ancient stone at Yantlet.”
I found it a wonderful experience, standing alone at the London Stone as the sun rose over the Thames Estuary. But it could have all been very different. If you decide to visit the London Stone, then do so at your own risk and do not use this post as a guide. The estuary is a dangerous place.
The location of the stones and the boundary line across the River Thames
The Crow Stone at Southend
Older version erected on the 25th August 1755 by the Lord Mayor, now preserved in a park in Southend
1849 visit to the Crow Stone by the Lord Mayor of London
First glimpse of the London Stone
Approaching the London Stone across the beach
The London Stone with navigational marker for Yantlet Creek
Text, film & photographs copyright © A London Inheritance
HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ: 9th-10th November 2019
Spend a weekend in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Spitalfields and learn how to write a blog with The Gentle Author.
This course will examine the essential questions which need to be addressed if you wish to write a blog that people will want to read.
“Like those writers in fourteenth century Florence who discovered the sonnet but did not quite know what to do with it, we are presented with the new literary medium of the blog – which has quickly become omnipresent, with many millions writing online. For my own part, I respect this nascent literary form by seeking to explore its own unique qualities and potential.” – The Gentle Author
COURSE STRUCTURE
1. How to find a voice – When you write, who are you writing to and what is your relationship with the reader?
2. How to find a subject – Why is it necessary to write and what do you have to tell?
3. How to find the form – What is the ideal manifestation of your material and how can a good structure give you momentum?
4. The relationship of pictures and words – Which comes first, the pictures or the words? Creating a dynamic relationship between your text and images.
5. How to write a pen portrait – Drawing on The Gentle Author’s experience, different strategies in transforming a conversation into an effective written evocation of a personality.
6. What a blog can do – A consideration of how telling stories on the internet can affect the temporal world.
SALIENT DETAILS
The course will be held at 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields on 9th-10th November from 10am-5pm on Saturday and 11am-5pm on Sunday.
Lunch will be catered by Leila’s Cafe of Arnold Circus and tea, coffee & cakes by the Townhouse are included within the course fee of £300.
Accomodation at 5 Fournier St is available upon enquiry to Fiona Atkins fiona@townhousewindow.com
Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book a place on the course.
Patch, Pot & Print
Taking a cue from Spitalfields’ textile history, Townhouse in Fournier St has brought together three contemporary makers for this year’s Shoreditch Design Triangle who each take inspiration from cloth, weaving and pattern, under the umbrella Patch, Pot & Print.
Mary Norden stitches fine collages with antique fabric from diverse sources, Katrin Moye makes ceramics with motifs from Huguenot design, while Janet Tristram & Cameron Short of Bonfield Block Printers design pieces of clothing including traditional prints. The prints below are from a Somerset Song Coat lined with images from folk songs collected by Cecil Sharp, which suit this harvest season ideally. At Townhouse, they will be presented a Spitalfields Coat.
All are welcome at the opening tonight from 6:30pm and the exhibition runs daily until 29th September.
Young Johnny-a-Selling
From the song, ‘Green Broom.’ It tells of a poor boy called Johnny – son of a needle furze-cutter – who is ordered ‘away to the woods for green broom.’ Having cut enough broom to sell, young Johnny goes to market where he is spotted by a ‘fair lady’ in ‘her window so high.’ She is love-struck and sends her maid to fetch him. As Johnny enters the lady’s room, she implores: ‘Will you marry a lady in bloom, in bloom?’ to which he consents.
The Seeds of Love
Whilst visiting clergyman Charles Marson of Hambridge, Somerset, Cecil Sharp overheard the gardener, John England, singing this song as he toiled. Captivated by the lyrics and melody, he noted it down – the date was 22nd August 1903 and Sharp’s song-hunting quest grew from it.
Like a Dove
From the song ‘Sovay, Sovay’ in which a wily young woman disguises herself as a highwayman, holds up her betrothed with a flintlock and – to establish his good faith – asks him to hand over his ring.
I Had Not the Liberty (the Seeds of Love)
The song is written from an unmarried woman’s point of view. In it, she reflects on a series of missed romantic opportunities – represented by the violet, the lily and the pink. Despite the song’s melancholic tone, the woman strikes a defiant note at its end – ‘For the grass that have been oftentimes trampled underfoot, give it time it will rise up again.’
John Barleycorn
This image is from the ancient folk song of the same name. In it, Barleycorn is a personification of the beer and whiskey crop, barley. The song tells a grisly tale of the indignities, attacks and eventual death he suffers, mirroring the various stages of barley cultivation. In this print, John Barleycorn is portrayed as a pagan totem – a kind of ‘Beowa’ an Anglo Saxon figure associated with barley and agriculture.
Hare & Greyhound
From ‘The Two Magicians’, a song that Cecil Sharp heard it from just one source – a blacksmith with the apt name of William Sparks. It tells the tale of a girl who refuses to marry a ‘husky, dusky, musty, fusky, coal blacksmith…’ The song takes a surreal turn as the girl resorts to shape-shifting to escape his advances. Little does she know that he, too, has the power to transform himself.
Wraggle Taggle Gypsies
It tells the story of a wealthy, landed lady who eschews her ‘privileged’ life to run off with a band of Romanies – by doing so, she frees herself.
Queen of May
From the melodious and haunting song, ‘As I walked through the Meadows’. It tells the tale of a boy who comes across a country maid – ‘so pretty, so dapper and pert’ – wandering the spring fields. Although just a young, innocent girl, she is the embodiment of all that is natural, bountiful and good – a Ceres, a goddess to him. He crowns her ‘the sweet Queen of May’.
Eyes that Could Not See
From a lyric in the song, ‘Bruton Town’ – Shakespearean and fairytale in equal measure.
Crystal Spring
The lyrics of the first verse are particularly evocative, transporting the listener to a cool, verdant Arcadia – ‘Down by some crystal spring, where the nightingales sing, Most pleasant it is, in season, to hear the groves ring…’ The print’s symmetry is inspired by a seventeenth century carved Bible box.
False Young Man
This image is from the folk song, ‘The Sprig of Thyme’. It tells the story of a country girl who falls foul of her suitors and their false promises. The cautionary tale, heavy with botanical symbolism and plant lore, was passed from mother to daughter across generations.
Images copyright © Janet Tristram of Bonfield Block Printers
Cecil Osborne’s Murals For Sale
The three lost panels by East End artist Cecil Osborne (1909-96) which once hung in St Pancras Town Hall in Euston Rd, and were recently rediscovered, are now up for auction at Roseberys in West Norwood on Tuesday 24th September. Click here for details of the sale
St Pancras & Kings Cross, 1956 (Click to enlarge)
Camden, Highgate & Hampstead, 1958 (Click to enlarge)
Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia, 1965 (Click to enlarge)
David Buckman author of From Bow to Biennale, the history of the East London Group of painters, took me to meet anthropologist Dr Kaori O’Connor at her flat on the top floor of an old mansion block near Bedford Sq.
There was an air of mystery about David’s invitation and I was excited because he promised to show me three important lost murals by East End artist Cecil Osborne illustrating the history of the former London Borough of St Pancras. Let me confess, I was not disappointed to encounter this splendid triptych.
Cecil Osborne was born in Poplar in 1909 and, after studying at a commercial college, sought clerical work. Yet he had artistic talent and educated himself in art by reading books and visiting galleries. After viewing the East London Group exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1928, Cecil presented his work to the leader of the Group, John Cooper, and joined Cooper’s art classes at the Bow & Bromley Institute. As a consequence, Cecil exhibited around thirty of his paintings in East London Group exhibitions from 1929 until 1936, as well as supplying his clerical skills as secretary and treasurer of the Group.
In writing his book, David Buckman spent more that twenty years researching the lost history of the East London Group which had become dispersed after the Second World War. When David corresponded with Cecil in the last years of his life, after he had retired to Spain, David learnt of three murals which Cecil had painted for St Pancras Town Hall in the Euston Rd that had been removed from their original location and subsequently lost.
Cecil’s son Dorian Osborne supplied this description:
“The offer was from my father to supply three pictures painted in oils depicting the history of the Borough on canvases to be hung in the small Assembly Room at St Pancras Town Hall in Euston Rd. The council supplied the materials and father designed and painted the series which are six feet by six feet square.
We were living at 46 Belsize Sq at the time and that is where the first was painted, the work commencing in, I seem to recall, 1956 or thereabouts. My brother and I were used as artist’s models for some of the children depicted. Also there are two rather ragged children shown in some sections which were based on the Bisto advertisement – for example, in one panel, pushing a hand-cart. The motorcar depicted in the illustration of the Doric Arch at Euston Station is a Triumph Gloria.
In 1958, we moved to 7 Redston Rd, N8, and that is where the second panel was completed and the third executed. It is the third which shows the Post Office Tower, as it was in progress when Mary and I married in 1965 and she remembers seeing this panel in the house. At a later date, the council moved all three to the public lending library in Brecknock Rd near Kentish Town from where they were moved into storage.”
After David’s book was published, Dr Kaori O’Connor contacted him to say she had the murals, as she explained to me:
“I did not acquire the paintings so much as rescue them. They turned up in a weekly sale at the old Phillips auction rooms in Bayswater in the nineteen-nineties. Not a picture sale, but a general one, thrown in with furniture and oddments.
I saw one of the canvas panels poking out from behind a fridge. The Phillips staff knew nothing about their background and did not know what to make of them. I realised that some of the places featured in the paintings were near to where I live in Bloomsbury and knew I had to save them. If they had failed to sell, they would have been scrapped. As I recall, there were no other bidders.
Once I got them home, I realised they were a unique social history of a part of London that is rapidly changing out of recognition, while also acquiring a new cultural and artistic life today. Only recently, when I met David Buckman, I learned about the artist Cecil Osborne, his life and how the panels came to be painted for the old St Pancras Borough Council which no longer exists.
I have had the panels for some twenty years, and they remain as fresh and fascinating as the day I first saw them. They have a unique presence with a very strong sense of time and place, and tell their many stories eloquently. They are also very good company.
They were painted for a public space, intended to be seen by many people, so I would like them to find a new home where they can be widely appreciated as the remarkable artworks they are. I believe the past they depict can only enrich the present and future.“
St Pancras Town Hall, now Camden Town Hall, where Cecil Osborne’s murals originally hung
Paintings photographed by Lucinda Douglas Menzies
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Dorothy Annan’s Murals at the Barbican
Lucy Kemp Welch’s Mural at the Royal Exchange
