Eleanor Crow’s Bakers’ Shops
Years have passed since we first featured Eleanor Crow’s beautiful watercolours of East End shops in these pages and Spitalfields Life Books is now publishing a handsome hardback collection of them SHOPFRONTS OF LONDON, In Praise of Small Neighbourhood Shops in collaboration with Batsford Books.
You can preorder to support publication and you will receive a signed copy in the first week of September. Click here to preorder for £14.99
Beigel Shop, Brick Lane
Eleanor’s richly-hued watercolour paintings of favourite East End Bakers set my stomach rumbling just to look at them . “I live in a bakery-free part of the East End and popping out for decent bread usually involves a cycle ride,” she admitted to me, “So I’m always on the lookout for good bakers and I wish we still had a proper bakery in every neighbourhood like they do in the rest of Europe.”
In common with Eleanor, I also plan my routes around the East End using the bakers’ shops as landmarks – so that I can take consolation in knowing the proximity of the nearest one, just in case the desire for something tasty from the bakery overtakes me.
“One of my regular bus routes has The Baker’s Arms as its final destination and close by is a beautiful set of almshouses, built by the London Master Bakers’ Benevolent Institution in the nineteenth century,” Eleanor informed me, elucidating bakers’ lore, as she took the first bite of a freshly baked Hot Cross Bun still warm from the oven.“Luckily people always want bread, so the traditional bakeries can still thrive alongside new businesses – but I do recommend sampling the goods a few times in each one, just to be sure which is the best…”
Robertsons, Lea Bridge Rd
Novelty Bakery, East Ham
Jesshops, Newington Green
Rinkoff’s, Vallance Rd
Goswell Bakeries, Canning Town
Akdeniz Bakery, Stoke Newington
Star Bakery, Dalston Lane
Fabrique Bakery, Hoxton
Raab the Bakers, Essex Rd
Percy Ingle, Lea Bridge Rd
Anderson’s, Hoxton St
Daren Bread, Stepney Green
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY FOR £14.99
At a time of momentous change in the high street, Eleanor’s witty and fascinating personal survey champions the enduring culture of Britain’s small neighbourhood shops.
As our high streets decline into generic monotony, we cherish the independent shops and family businesses that enrich our city with their characterful frontages and distinctive typography.
Eleanor’s collection includes more than hundred of her watercolours of the capital’s bakers, cafés, butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, chemists, launderettes, hardware stores, eel & pie shops, bookshops and stationers. Her pictures are accompanied by the stories of the shops, their history and their shopkeepers – stretching from Chelsea in the west to Bethnal Green and Walthamstow in the east.
A Bethnal Green Mulberry Calamity
Yesterday I fell out of a Mulberry tree in Victoria Park while harvesting Mulberries for our campaign to Save the Bethnal Green Mulberry and broke my arm. One moment I was reaching from the top of ladder to pick the largest juiciest Mulberry. The next moment I lay on the grass with the ladder beneath and my right arm twisted at a painful angle.
Nine hours later, I was discharged from the Royal London Hospital with my arm in plaster. I shall endeavour to continue publishing daily in these pages but I know you will understand if it is a few weeks before normal service is resumed.
In the meantime, I need your help more than ever with our London Mulberry Harvest. We are collaborating with Kitty Travers of La Grotta Ices to make Mulberry ice cream for our campaign.
Pick Mulberries from any of the publicly accessible trees on this LONDON MULBERRY MAP produced by Peter Coles of Morus Londinium. Then deliver your Mulberries to Leila’s Shop, 17 Calvert Avenue, Boundary Estate, E2. The shop is open until 5pm today and from Wednesday to Sunday each week. Drop me a line so we can ensure you get some Mulberry ice cream further down the line.
Avoid becoming a Mulberry martyr, please do not fall off the ladder while harvesting Mulberries!
Illustrated London, 1893
Marvel at London’s former manufacturing industry as exemplified by these progressive commercial enterprises from Illustrated London, 1893 in the archive at Bishopsgate Institute
Allen & Hanburys, Manufacturing Pharmaceutical Chemists & Wholesale Druggists, Bethnal Green – For the origin of this eminent firm we have to go back to as far as the days of Mr Silvanus Bevan who was admitted into the Apothecaries’ Company in 1715. Moreover, the firm does not neglect the requirements of modern enterprise . They are always progressive and their works at Bethnal Green are large and splendidly equipped, and are devoted to the extensive manufacture of many important specialities
Messrs H R Mopsey & Co, Ironmongers, High St, Wandsworth – Founded in the year 1840, this firm embodies all the improvements which the interim of half a century has enabled the proprietors to introduce and you will find the aspect of the firm’s handsome premises quite in accordance with the representative and leading position which the house has long occupied in this vicinity.
Messrs Culverwell, Brooks & Co, Brokers, Colonial & Foreign Hides, Skins, Leather, Furs, Taloow &c, Sunn & Toppings Wharves, Bermondsey – This is one of the most important businesses of its kind in London and it is still steadily growing in extent and importance. The partners are business men of sound judgement and marked enterprise, and are worthy representatives of the important branch of commerce with which they have been so long associated.
Messrs Morel Bros, Cobbett & Son Ltd, Importers & Purveyors of High Class Comestibles, Piccadilly – The extensive and mercantile concern now carried under the above title was formed several years ago by the amalgamation of two old-established and high class businesses long known in the West End. As purveyors to Her Majesty to the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duchess of Albany, Prince Christian and Prince Henry of Battenberg, Messrs Morel Bros, Cobbett & Son Ltd enjoy the most distinguished patronage it is possible to secure.
Jay’s Mourning Warehouse, Regent St – The last half century has witnessed in London the creation of a number of unique mercantile institutions predestined to win fame and play the part of leaders in their departments of commercial activity. Undoubtedly, no other firm will more readily occur to our readers as answering this description than Jay’s, which has conducted over fifty years that great mourning house in Regent St. Recently, this noted firm sustained a loss in the death of its distinguished founder Mr W C Jay.
The Manufacturing Goldsmiths’ & Silversmiths’ Co, Regent St – Some of the finest business establishments in the world line the broad and fashionable thoroughfare of Regent St and the conspicuous feature in this brilliant array of shops are these showrooms with their unequalled display of beautiful and costly specialities.
Messrs Whitebread, Morris & co, Engravers, Steam Printers & Lithographers, Bookbinders & Export Stationers, Fenchurch St – In connection with the printing and lithographing art industries which are so extensively carried on in the City of London, a prominent position has long been held by this well known firm whose name is identified with the production of a large variety of high class work.
Herbert Finch & Co, Designers, Engravers & Colour Printers, Wholesale Manufacturers & Export Stationers, Specialists in Novelties for Advertising, Leadenhall St – In 1879, they erected this noble structure within which their trade is now carried on, and which forms one of the largest and finest printing offices in the City. Mr Herbert Finch is widely known in the trade and is thoroughly and practically versed in all its details, and he continues to take an active and supreme part in its management of the firm which owes its success and advancement to his energy and foresight.
The Great Tower Tea Co Ltd, Jewry St – To the enterprise of this firm, the public is indebted for a very marked and widespread improvement in the quality of tea.
Whyte Ridsdale & Co, Manufacturers’ Agents, Warehousemen & Importers of Fancy Goods, Houndsditch – For over twenty-five years, they have been involved in the business of preparing, collecting and distributing British and Foreign fancy goods, and they have been compelled – more than once – to increase their accommodation and pull down their premises. Still, the increase of their business outstrips the room which the enlarged premises afford and this year is to witness a further large addition to the building they occupy.
Mr Henry Conolly, Manufacturing Sanitary Engineer, Tolmers Sq – In connection with the great developments in sanitary science which have taken place during the past half century, no name is better known or enjoys a higher reputation than that of Henry Conolly.
Messrs John S Fitter & Son, Meat Salesmen, Leadenhall Market – Every visitor to the market is familiar with this fine establishment in the Grand Avenue .They were the earliest appointed agents in England for New Zealand and Australian frozen meat and, by their energetic advocacy of this valuable product and the splendid quality of the supplies they placed in the market, they speedily overcame the, altogether groundless and short-sighted, objections which at first met their endeavours to develop this new and useful trade.
Royal Rubber Co, Sloane St – Not so very many years ago, the waterproof garment was universally regarded as a necessary evil by travellers and persons whose business forced them to face inclement weather, because of its extreme awkwardness and uncompromising ugliness. Now the celebrated Royal Rubber Co brings forward perfect weather defences, in the form of graceful, elegant, artistic and essentially comfortable items of waterproof attire.
H Mallett, Window Blind Manufacturer & Upholsterer, Finchley Rd – After nearly thirty years in the business, Mr Mallett, an expert and skilled workman, took the above premises and developed what has now become the most important business of its kind in London. Mr Mallett has shown much ingenuity in introducing many useful improvements and desirable novelties in his trade.
Messrs Symmons Bros, General Drapers, Hosiers, Silk Merchants, Lades’, Gentlemen’s & Children’s Outfitters, Finchley Rd – This establishment is splendidly appointed in the best modern style, served by numerous and highly efficient staff, and stocked with a choice selection of goods, that entitles it to comparison with the leading houses of the West End.
C Holz, Theatrical & Private Wig-Maker, Covent Garden – Although the modern perruquier is not so universally in demand as his predecessor of the ‘good old days,’ he is – if anything – called upon to exercise far greater skill in his art by fashioning wigs which cannot be distinguished from the natural normal head of hair and, among the cleverest exponents of the craft in the metropolis, a place of distinction must unquestionably be accorded to Mr C Holz, who entered upon his present prosperous career in Fulham twelve years ago and subsequently migrated to his current, eligibly situated, premises to give full scope to a rapidly-expanding business.
Wade & Co, Tailors, Habit & Breeches Makers, Colonial & American Outfitters, Gracechurch St – The founder, Mr Zachariah Wade, attributes its success to the recognition and application of the principle of cash payments applied to the production and sale of best goods only, a principle hitherto associated with what is known in the trade as slop-made articles. Lighted with electricity, goods now may be selected during a London fog with almost as much satisfaction as upon a bright sunny day.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Roy Wild, Hop Picker
There is Roy on the right with his left hand stuck in his pocket – to indicate the appropriate air of nonchalance befitting a street-wise man of the world of around twelve years old – on a hopping expedition with his family from Hoxton.
Roy went hop picking each year with this relations until he reached the age of eighteen and, at this season, he always recalls his days in Kent. Still in touch with many of those who were there with him in the hop fields in the fifties, Roy was more than happy to get out his photographs and settle down with a cup of tea with a drop of whisky in it, and tell me all about it.
“I first went hopping with my family in 1948 when I was ten or eleven. We went to Selling near Faversham in Kent. The fields were owned by Alan Bruce Neame of Shepherd Neame, and he would employ people to pick the hops which he sold to breweries. We all lined up on the last day and he would pay each of us in person.
Some Londoners went by train from London Bridge St, all waiting on the station and carrying all their stuff with them. We were very fortunate, dad’s brother Ernie, he had an asphalt company and had an open backed lorry, for which he made a frame for a rain canopy, and we all went down to hopping together – our family, Ernie’s family, also Renee’s sister Mary and her family. Ernie would drive down to Hoxton and pick us up at Northport St, with all our bits and pieces, our bags and suitcases with bed linen and that type of thing, and away we’d all go down to Faversham. We’d go at the weekend, so we could spend a day unpacking and be ready to start picking on Monday.
There was us hop pickers from London but Neame would also employ ‘home-dwellers,’ these were Kentish people. The accommodation they lived in was far superior to what we were subjected to. We were given no more than Nissen huts, square huts made of corrugated iron with a door and that was about all, no windows. It was very, very primitive. We washed in a bowl of water and the toilet was a hole dug in a field. My mother would take old palliasses down with us from Hoxton and they would be stuffed with straw or hay from the barn, and that would our mattresses. The beds were made of planks, very basic and supported upon four logs to prop them up off the floor. You’d put the palliasses on top of the planks and the blankets on top of that. The huts were always running alive with creepy-crawlies, so anyone that had a phobia of that wasn’t really suited to hop picking.
There was another room next to it which was half the size, this was our kitchen. My dad would take down an old primus stove for cooking. It was fuelled by paraffin and the more you pumped it up the fiercer the flame, the quicker the cooking. It was only a small thing that sat on a box. The alternative to that was cooking outside. The farmer would provide bundles of twigs known as ‘faggots,’ to fuel the fire and we would rig up a few bricks with a grill where we’d put the kettle and a frying pan. They’d literally get pot-black in the smoke.
We usually went from three weeks to a month hop picking, sometimes the whole of September, and you could stay on for fruit picking. When we first started, we picked into a big long troughs of sacking hanging down inside a wooden frame. They were replaced by six bushel baskets. The tally man would come round with a cart to collect the six bushel baskets and mark your card with how much you had picked, before carrying the hops away to the oasthouses for drying.
At the time, we were paid one shilling and sixpence a bushel. You’d pick into a bushel basket while you were sitting with it between your legs and when it was full, you’d walk over to the six bushel basket and tip it in. My dad was a fast picker, he’d say ‘Come on Roy, do it a bit quicker!’ All your fingers got stained black by the the hops, we called it ‘hoppy hands.’
If you had children with you, they would mess about. Their parents would be rebuking them and telling them to get picking because the more you picked, the more you earned. Some people could get hold of a bine, pull the leaves off and, in one sweep, take all the hops off into the basket. Other people, to bulk up their baskets would put all kinds of things in there. they would put the bines at the bottom of the six bushel basket and nobody would know, but if you got caught then you was in trouble. My dad showed me how to fill a six bushel basket up to the five bushel level and then put your arms down inside to lift up the hops to the top just before the tally man came round.
The adults were dedicated pickers because you had to buy food all the time and being there could cost more money than you made. There was a little store near us called ‘Clinges’ and further up, just past the graveyard, was another store which was more modern called ‘Blythes’, and next door to that was a pub called the ‘White Swan’ and that was the release for all the hop pickers. They all used to go there on Saturday and Sunday nights and there’d be sing-songs and dancing, before going back to work on Monday morning. It was the only enjoyment you had down there, except – if you didn’t go up to the pub – you’d get all the familes sitting round of a weekend and reminiscing and singing songs, round a big open fire made up of the faggots
We worked from nine o’clock until about four, Monday to Friday. The owner of the hop fields employed guys to work for him who were called ‘Pole Pullers,’ they had big long poles with a sharp knife on the end and when you pulled a bine, if it didn’t come down, you’d call out for a pole puller and with his big long pole he’d cut the top of it and the rest if it would fall down. When it was nearing four o’clock, they’d call out ‘Pull no more bines!’ which was what all the kids were waiting for because by this time they’d all had just about enough. A hop field can be one muddy place and if you’re in among all that with wellingtons on it can get pretty sticky. If it was ready to rain, the pole pullers would also go round and call ‘Pull no more bines.’ Nobody was expected to work outside in the rain. We dreaded the rain but we welcomed the pole pullers when they called out, because that was the day’s work done until the following morning.
We looked forward to going hop picking because it was the chance of an adventure in the country. It was just after the war and we’d had it rough in Hoxton. I was born in 1937 and I’d grown up through the war, and we still had ration books for a long time afterwards. I was a young man in the fabulous fifties and the swinging sixties. In the fifties, we had American music and Elvis Presley, and in the sixties the Beatles and British music. Hop picking was being mechanised, they had invented machines that could do it. So we grew away from it, and young men and young women had better things to do with their time.”
Roy stands in the centre of this family group
Renee Wild and Rosie Wild
Picking into a six bushel basket
Roy’s father Andy Wild rides in the cart with his brother Ernie
Roy’s grandfather Andrew Wild is on the far left of this photo
Roy is on the far right of this group
Roy sits in the left in the front of this picture
Rosie, Mary & Renee
Roy’s father Andy Wild with Roy’s mother Rosie at the washing up and Pearl
Roy’s mother, Rosie Wild
Renee, Mary & Pearl
Roy’s father Andy stands on the left and his Uncle Ernie on the right
Roy
Roy (with Trixie) and Tony sit beside their mother Rosie
Roy’s mother and father with his younger brother Tony
Roy stands on the right of this group of his pals
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Hop Picking Photographs
This selection of hop picking photographs is from the archive of Tower Hamlets Community Housing. Traditionally, this was the time when East Enders headed down to the Hop Farms of Kent & Sussex, embracing the opportunity of a breath of country air and earning a few bob too.
Bill Brownlow, Margie Brownlow, Terry Brownlow & Kate Milchard, with Keith Brownlow & Kevin Locke in front, at Guinness’ Northland’s Farm at Bodiam, Sussex, in 1958. Guinness bought land at Bodiam in 1905 and eight hundred acres were devoted to hop growing at its peak.
Julie Mason, Ted Hart, Edward Hart & friends at Hoathleys Farm, Hook Green, near Lamberhurst, Kent
Lou Osbourn, Derek Protheroe & Kate Day at Goudhurst Farm
Margie Brownlow & Charlie Brownlow with Keith Brownlow, Kate Milchard & Terry Brownlow in front at Guinness’ Northland’s Farm at Bodiam, Sussex, in 1950
Mr & Mrs Gallagher with Kitty Adams & Jackie Gallagher from Westport St, Stepney, in the hop gardens at Pembles Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent in 1959
Jackie Harrop, Joan Day & George Rogers at Whitbread’s Farm, Beltring, Kent in 1949
Mag Day (on the left at the back) in the hop gardens with others at Highwood’s Farm, Collier St, in 1938
Pop Harrop at Whitbread’s Farm, Beltring, Kent in 1949
Sarah Watt, Mrs Hopkins, Steven Allen, Ann Allen, Tom, Albert Allen & Sally Watt in the hop gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Den Farm, Collier St, Kent in 1943
Harry Watt, Tom Shuffle, Mary Shuffle, Sally Watt, Julie Callagher, Ada Watt & Sarah Watt in the hop gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Den Farm, Collier St, Kent in the fifties
Harry Watt, Sally Watt, Sarah Watt holding Terry Ellames in the hop gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Den Farm, Collier St, Kent in 1957
Harry Ayres, a pole puller, in the hop gardens at Diamond Place Farm, Nettlestead, Kent
Emmie Rist, Theresa Webber, Kit Webber & Eileen Ayres in the hop gardens at Diamond Place Farm, Nettlestead, Kent
Kit Webber with her Aunt Mary, her Dad Sam Webber and her Mum, Emmie Ris,t in the hop gardens at Diamond Place Farm, Nettlestead, Kent
Harry Ayres with his wife Kit Webber in the hop gardens at Diamond Place Farm, Nettlestead, Kent.
Richard Pyburn, Mag Day, Patty Seach and Kitty Gray from Kirks Place, Limehouse, in the hop gardens at Highwoods Farm, Collier St, Kent
The Gorst and Webber families at Jack Thompsett’s Farm, Fowle Hall, Kent in the forties
Kitty Waters with sons Terry & John outside the huts at Pembles Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent in 1952
Mr & Mrs Gallagher from Westport St, Stepney, with their grandchildren in the hop gardens at Pembles Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent in 1958
Sybil Ogden, Doris Cossey, Danny Tyrrell & Sally Hawes near Yalding, Kent
John Doree, Alice Thomas, Celia Doree & Mavis Doree in the hop gardens near Cranbrook, Kent
Bill Thomas & his wife Annie, in the hop gardens near Cranbrook, Kent
The Castleman Family from Poplar hop picking in the twenties
Terry & Margie Brownlow at Guinness’ Northland’s Farm at Bodiam in Sussex in 1949
Alfie Raines, Johnny Raines, Charlie Cushway, Les Benjamin & Tommy Webber in the Hop Gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Farm at Fowl Hall near Paddock Wood in Kent
Lal Outram, Wag Outram & Mary Day on the common at Jack Thompsett’s Farm at Fowl Hall near Paddock Wood in Kent in 1955
Taken in September 1958 at Moat Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent. Sitting on the bin is Miss Whitby with Patrick Mahoney, young John Mahoney and Sheila Tarling (now Mahoney) – Sheila & Patrick were picking to save up for their engagement party in October
Maryann Lowry’s Nan, Maggie ,on the left with her Great-Grandmother, Maryann, in the check shirt in the hop gardens, c.1910
Having a rest in hop gardens at Whitbread’s Farm, Beltring, Kent in 1966. In the back row are Mary Brownlow, Sean Locke, Linda Locke, Kate Milchard, Chris Locke & Margie Brownlow with Kevin Locke and Terry Locke in front.
Margie Brownlow & her Mum Kate Milchard at Whitbreads Farm in Beltring, Kent in 1967. These huts were two stories high. The children playing outside are – Timmy Kaylor, Chrissy Locke, Terry Locke, Sean Locke, Linda Locke & Kevin Locke.
Chris Locke, Sally Brownlow, Linda Brownlow, Kate Milchard, Margie Brownlow, Terry Locke & Mary Brownlow at Whitbread’s Farm, Beltring, Kent in 1962
Johnno Mahoney, Superintendant of the Caretakers on the Bancroft Estate in Stepney, driving the “Mahoney Special” at Five Oak Green in 1947
The Clarkson family in the hop gardens in Staplehurst. Gladys Clarkson , Edith Clarkson, William Clarkson, Rose Clarkson & Henry Norris.
John Moore, Ross, Janet Ambler, Maureen Irish & Dennis Mortimer in 1950 at Luck’s Farm, East Peckham, Kent
Kate Fairclough, Mrs Callaghan, Mary Fairclough & Iris Fairclough at Moat Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent in 1972
A gang of Hoppers from Wapping outside the brick huts at Stilstead Farm, Tonbridge, Kent with Jim Tuck & John James in the back. In the middle row the first person on the left is unknown, but the others are Rose Tuck, holding Terry Tuck, Rose Tuck, Danny Tuck & Nell Jenkins. In the front are Alan Jenkins, Brian Tuck, Pat Tuck, Jean Tuck, Terry Taylor & Brian Taylor.
Nanny Barnes, Harriet Hefflin, “Minie” Mahoney & Patsy Mahoney at Ploggs Hall Farm
In the Hop Gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Farm at Fowl Hall, near Paddock Wood in Kent in the late forties. Alfie Raines, Edie Cooper, Margie Gorst & Lizzie Raines
The Day family from Kirks Place, Limehouse, at Highwoods Farm in Collier St, Kent in the fifties
Annie Smith, Bill Daniels, Pearl Brown & Nell Daniels waiting for the measurer in the Hop Garden at Hoathley’s Farm, Hook Green, Kent
On the common outside the huts at at Hoathley’s Farm, Hook Green, Kent – you can see the oasthouses in the distance. Rita Daniels, Colleen Brown, Maureen Brown, Marie Brown, Billy Daniels, Gerald Brown & Teddy Hart , with Sylvie Mason & Pearlie Brown standing.
The Outram family from Arbour Sq outside their huts at Hubbles Farm, Hunton, Kent. Unusually these were detached huts but, like all the others, they made of corrugated tin and all had one small window – simply basic rooms, roughly eleven feet square
Janis Randall being held by her mother Joyce Lee andalongside her is her father, Alfred Lee in a hop garden, near Faversham in September 1950
David & Vivian Lee sitting on a log on the common outside Nissen huts used to house hop pickers
Gerald Brown, Billy Daniels & Dennis Woodham in the hop gardens at Gatehouse Farm near Brenchley, Kent, in the fifties
Nelly Jones from St Paul’s Way with Eileen Mahoney, and in the background is Eileen’s mum, “Minie” Mahoney. Taken in the fifties in the Hop Gardens at Ploggs Hall Farm, between Paddock Wood and Five Oak Green.
At Jack Thompsett’s Farm at Fowl Hall, near Paddock Wood in Kent
Ploggs Hall Farm Ladies Football Team. Back Row – Fred Archer, Lil Callaghan, Harriet Jones, Unknown, Unknown, Nanny Barnes, Liz Weeks, Harriet Hefflin, Johnno Mahoney. Front Row – Doris Hurst Eileen Mahoney & Nellie Jones
John Moore, Ross, Janet Ambler, Maureen Irish & Dennis Mortimer in 1950 at Luck’s Farm, East Peckham, Kent
The Outram and Pyburn families outside a Kent pub in 1957, showing clockwise Kitty Tyrrell, Mary Pyburn, Charlie Protheroe, Rene Protheroe, Wag Outram, Derek Protheroe in the pram, Annie Lazel, Tom Pyburn, Bill Dignum & Nancy Wright.
Sally Watt’s Hop Picker’s account book from Jack Thompsett’s Den Farm, Collier St, Kent in the fifties
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East End Mulberry Harvest
Now is the season for Mulberries, as this photograph I took yesterday confirms. We are working with Kitty Travers of the celebrated La Grotta Ices to produce Mulberry ice cream for our campaign to SAVE THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY and we need your help to harvest the Mulberries.
If you have a Mulberry tree or access to one, we would be grateful if you can harvest them for us. If you have a Mulberry tree in the East End and are willing for us to come and harvest them, please get in touch. If you are willing to contribute a few hours harvesting Mulberries in the East End in the next ten days, please get in touch and give details of your availability.
Write to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
The central collecting point for Mulberries will be Leila’s Shop in Calvert Avenue on the Boundary Estate, Shoreditch. Anyone that supplies Mulberries will receive some of our Mulberry ice cream in recompense.
We will shortly be announcing the next stage in our campaign to SAVE THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY and stop developers Crest Nicholson uprooting the oldest tree in the East End. This week, the Woodland Trust criticised Tower Hamlets Council in the case of the Bethnal Green Mulberry for not enforcing the change in National Planning Policy Framework of July 2018 designed to extend protection to Ancient and Veteran trees.
You can contribute to our legal fund by clicking here
Aubrey Silkoff At The Boundary Estate
Aubrey Silkoff returned to Navarre St, Arnold Circus, to view the brick where he incised his name on the nineteenth of April 1950, when he was eleven years old. You can see it just to the left of his upper arm in the photo above, indicated by two white dots on the brick.
When I first spoke with Aubrey over the phone, he admitted that he had no memory of carving it, although he confirmed that he grew up in Laleham Buildings on the Boundary Estate and Navarre St was where he played football as a child.
Fortunately for us, 1950 was also the year of the photo craze when Aubrey and his pals acquired cameras and were able develop their pictures at the Boys Club at Virginia Rd School. As a consequence, we have a photographic record to show us some of the children who wrote their names on the wall of Wargrave Buildings at that time. Capturing the spirit and energy of a fleeting moment, these pictures allow us to put faces to the names incised on the bricks, vividly evoking the childhood world of over half a century ago which produced graffiti of such unlikely longevity. Recalling Bert Hardy’s photographs of East End children on the street, what makes these exuberant images special is that they were taken by the children themselves.
As we walked down Navarre St together, I had the strange experience of introducing Aubrey to his long forgotten graffiti. “It was something to do while we talked,” said Aubrey, explaining that he and his pals used nails from the wooden scooters they constructed to roam as far as the bombsites in the City and around St Pauls. Yet although Aubrey recognised a few names when he saw them on the wall and even matched some up to the pictures, together we confronted the limit of his fragmentary memory after so many years. “I wonder what life held for them?” he said quietly, contemplating the names on the wall, as we stood in the empty street lined with parked cars that once echoed to the noise of children playing.
“The streets were clear of vehicles, except maybe the odd coal wagon or a fruiterer with a horse and cart. There were few cars because no-one could afford one and, if someone bought one, they took all the kids for a ride in it as a novelty,” Aubrey told me, explaining how, as children, they had possession of the streets for their playground, using cans, or laying down jumpers or coats in the road, to create goalposts.
“We were a group of kids that used to know each other and spend all our time together in the streets because the flats were not conducive to living in. There was no space for us inside, so we used to be outside, swinging on the railings at the corner of Navarre St and Arnold Circus. We didn’t know anything about girls. The boys had nothing to do with girls. Half the kids were Jewish but there was no conscious decision to mix with your own kind, although I think we gravitated together because we considered ourselves outsiders. Many kids had lost their fathers in the war, and they had background problems.
You didn’t know that you don’t have much money, because it was just not to be found. I had new clothes once a year. I used to have a new suit at Passover. My mother took me down to a place off Brick Lane. There were schleppers everywhere on the street – touts for tailors. I remember going back for fittings, there wasn’t much ready-made clothing available then. I was ashamed of my parents because I was born late and I thought they were old. On the day of the V.E celebrations we came down into the yard with our food on plates and our chipped enamel cups, we didn’t have china. And when the people saw them, they asked in disapproval, ‘Can we replace them?’ That was embarrassing.
I took the eleven-plus exam which decided whether I would go to Grammar School or Secondary Modern which was inferior. I don’t know what happened but I never passed or failed, I went to a Central School instead. At the end of term we were called onto the stage and divided up between which schools we were going to. I cried because I didn’t go to Grammar School. It was cruel because it split friendships up. ‘What are you doing today? We’re doing Latin and logarithmic equations,’ they said, and I felt a failure because I didn’t do any of those things.
Nothing has been easy for me, exams were always hard. But I was never at the bottom and never excelled either, I was always in the heap. I was fortunate that in those post-war years there were expanding opportunities open to me, giving me an education and a career. Because I had no ambition, I never looked further than my nose. Though I knew I wanted to get out of the East End because I did not want to work in a tailoring sweatshop as my father and all his friends did. As a greeting they, always asked each other, “Are you working?” because the work was seasonal and people were out of work for long periods of time.
In 1958, I moved out to a bedsitter in Stoke Newington on my own. I learnt to look out for myself and be wary of what people are trying to put over you, and as a consequence I’ve been known as a cynical person throughout my life. But I have no regrets about any of it today because it gave me a sense of looking at the glass as half-empty. I never expected anything wonderful to happen and it has. I have progressed over the years and I feel very lucky indeed.
I was interested in classical music from a very early age. One day I went over to Sadler’s Wells Theatre and offered money to buy a ticket but the kiosk person said ‘You haven’t got enough’, so this couple behind me in the queue said, ‘Do you really want to see it?’ and they bought me a ticket. That was ‘La Boheme’ – I wish I could repay that couple today.”
Contemplating the photo of himself at eleven, a crucial moment in his childhood, Aubrey pointed out the spilt food on the “scruffy” jacket and interpreted his expression as “sardonic,” while I saw self-possession and humour in his youthful visage. “I’m thinking ‘Why am I here?'” he said, rolling his eyes with a droll grin.
“Now I look at all these photographs and I wonder,’Did it actually happen?'” continued Aubrey, thinking out loud. Yet when he returned to Arnold Circus, he encountered the evidence that it did happen, because nearly seventy years later, Aubrey found his name graven into the wall on Navarre St – Aubrey Silkoff, Wed 19th April 1950.
Aubrey at the time he wrote his name on the wall of Wargrave Buildings
At the photographic club
At Arnold Circus, with the bandstand visible in the background
A stunt at the corner of Navarre St
The trick revealed – this is the same pillarbox
Aubrey Silkoff – with his brick in the top left corner
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