The Highdays & Holidays Of Old London
On Bank Holiday Monday, let us to consider the highdays & holidays of old London
Boys lining up at The Oval, c.1930
School is out. Work is out. All of London is on the lam. Everyone is on the streets. Everyone is in the parks. What is going on? Is it a jamboree? Is it a wingding? Is it a shindig? Is it a bevy? Is it a bash?
These are the high days and holidays of old London, as recorded on glass slides by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society and once used for magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute.
No doubt these lectures had an educational purpose, elucidating the remote origins of London’s quaint old ceremonies. No doubt they had a patriotic purpose to encourage wonder and sentiment at the marvel of royal pageantry. Yet the simple truth is that Londoners – in common with the rest of humanity – are always eager for novelty, entertainment and spectacle, always seeking any excuse to have fun. And London is a city ripe with all kinds of opportunities for amusement, as illustrated by these magnificent photographs of its citizens at play.
Are you ready? Are you togged up? Did you brush your hair? Did you polish your shoes? There is no time to lose. We need the make the most of our high days and holidays. And we need to get there before the parade passes by.
At Hampstead Heath, c.1910.
Walls Ice Cream vendor, c.1920.
At Hampstead Heath, c.1910.
At Hampstead Heath, c.1910.
Balloon ascent at Crystal Palace, Sydenham, c.1930.
At the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, 1896.
Christ’s Hospital Procession across bridge on St Matthews Day, 1936.
A cycle excursion to The Spotted Dog in West Ham, 1930.
Pancake Greaze at Westminster School on Shrove Tuesday, c.1910.
Variety at the Shepherds Bush Empire, c.1920.
Dignitaries visit the Chelsea Royal Hospital, c.1920.
Games at the Foundling Hospital, Bloomsbury, c.1920.
Riders in Rotten Row, Hyde Park, c.1910.
Physiotherapy at a Sanatorium, 1916.
Vintners’ Company, Master’s Installation procession, City of London, c.1920.
Boating on the lake in Battersea Park, c.1920.
The King’s Coach, c.1911.
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee procession, 1897.
Lord Mayor’s Procession passing St Paul’s, 1933.
Policemen gives directions to ladies at the coronation of Edward VII, 1902.
After the procession for the coronation of George V, c.1911.
Observance of the feast of Charles I at Church of St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, 1932.
Chief Yeoman Warder oversees the Beating of the Bounds at the Tower of London, 1920.
Schoolchildren Beating the Bounds at the Tower of London, 1920.
A cycle excursion to Chingford Old Church, c.1910.
Litterbugs at Hampstead Heath, c.1930.
The Foundling Hospital Anti-Litter Band, c.1930.
Distribution of sixpences to widows at St Bartholomew the Great on Good Friday, c.1920.
Visiting the Cast Court to see Trajan’s Column at the Victoria & Albert Museum, c.1920.
A trip from Chelsea Pier, c.1910.
Doggett’s Coat & Badge Race, c.1920.
Feeding pigeons outside St Paul’s, c.1910.
Building the Great Wheel, Earls Court, c.1910.
Glass slides copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
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In Search Of The Civil War In London
At the site of the Civil War fort in Shoreditch
Very little survives today of the fortifications constructed to defend London in the English Civil War. Yet there is evidence to be found if you know where to look. So Contributing Cartographer Adam Dant & I set out to walk the route of the wall built by the Parliamentarians from Wapping to Westminster in 1642/3 to see what we could discover, as part of Adam’s research for a map he is planning of London in the Civil War.
In the autumn of 1642, Londoners blocked streets with barricades, posts and chains to defend their city. Over the next year, this evolved into eighteen kilometres of ramparts and ditches surrounding the capital, linking twenty forts containing around two hundred cannon. As many as 100,000 worked on digging the ditches and building up the ramparts with entire trades suspending their usual work for the duration.
A bank and ditch extended from Wapping up to Whitechapel where the excess earth was piled up in a mound that sat there until the eighteenth century when it was used to fill the ditch in again, which became Cannon St Rd and New Rd. Mount Terrace next to the Royal London Hospital takes its name from this and, off Commercial St, you will still find Rampart St and Flintlock Close recalling this era.
It was a bright summer’s morning as Adam Dant and I set off from Wapping New Stairs with George Vertue’s plan of the defences in hand. It is the best record we have but – as it was drawn almost a century later in 1738 – it may not be entirely accurate. As a guide, we carried the writing of William Lithgow, a Lanarkshire tailor who wrote an account of the defences in May 1643. “I have never seen a larger inveloped compasse within the whole universe,” he wondered.
As Adam & I ambled from Whitechapel through Spitalfields, I thought of Nicholas Culpeper the herbalist who lived in Red Lion House where Puma Court is today. In 1642, he was summoned by Oliver Cromwell to serve on the front line at Edgehill as Surgeon General.
In Shoreditch, the defences stood just north of St Leonard’s Church with a gateway at the foot of the Kingsland Rd. Today ‘The Conquerer,’ a former pub in Boundary St, is adorned with a painting of a Roundhead soldier which cannot be a co-incidence.
We set off westward following the line of the defences which ran in parallel but fifty yards north of Old St. The only evidence we found is in the name of Mount Mills off Goswell Rd, where the remains of seventeenth century windmills were recently excavated. From here, we followed the line of the wall and ditch until we reached Exmouth Market, teeming with office workers lining up for takeaway lunches. Here we took a brief detour, walking up Amwell St, uphill to Claremont Sq where a reservoir makes a convenient stand-in for Fort Royal, from which Wenceslas Hollar drew the view towards the city in 1644.
Retracing our steps to Exmouth Market and crossing Mount Pleasant, we traced the line of defences across Bloomsbury without finding any sign of their existence until we reached Bedford Sq. Southampton Fort stood here more than four centuries ago and the dramatic geometry of the square today evokes a military fortification without a huge leap of imagination.
In Fitzrovia, only the presence of Eastcastle St reassured us that we were still on the right track but, as we turned south west through Mayfair we came into Mount St, referring to a Civil War bulwark that stood here, known as ‘Oliver’s Mount.’ It was mid-afternoon when we arrived in Hyde Park where the remains of Civil War earthworks are still visible parallel to Park Lane. For as along as I have known the Park, I assumed these long mounds were recent landscaping to shield traffic noise, yet these inauspicious lumps in the grass actually date from when Park Lane was Tiburn Lane and the Tiburn river flowed through here, and this was the front line of the defence of London.
There is a certain irony that the west wall of Buckingham Palace garden follows the line of the Parliamentarian defences, protecting our monarch where once this line was protection against the Royalist forces. From Victoria, the ditch and wall ran down the river at Vauxhall and traversed the south bank to Southwark. But we wandered through the back streets around Vincent Sq towards Westminster, taking a short cut through Dean’s Yard to emerge in front of the Abbey.
Weary, foot-sore and thirsty, Adam & I arrived in Whitehall where Oliver Cromwell still presides over Parliament and – at respectable distance – a bust of Charles I at the Banqueting House commemorates the location of his execution. Across the road at Horseguards, the number ten on the clockface is painted black to indicate the hour when the axe fell and our nation’s history changed forever.
It was a long walk that Adam & I undertook on a warm day in the footsteps of John Lithgow through the dusty crowded streets and, in Westminster, we were confronted with the turbulence of our contemporary politics. Yet we were grateful that the journey we had taken through London in the Civil War granted a certain perspective which restored a necessary sense of proportion in the current crisis.
If readers are aware of other evidence of the Civil War visible today in London please let us know so Adam Dant can include it on his map.
George Vertue’s Plan of the Defences, published in 1738 (click to enlarge)
Wapping New Stairs, where the defences met the Thames
The line of the defences ran northward from Wapping to Whitechapel
Rampart St runs parallel to New Rd in Whitechapel
Off Commercial Rd
The Whitechapel Mound in the eighteenth century
Mount Terrace in Whitechapel, where they piled up the earth from digging the ramparts
“Advancing thence along the trench dyke which runneth through Wappine fields to the further end of White-chappell, a great way without Aldgate, and on the road to Essex, I saw a nine-angled fort, only pallosaded and single ditched, and planted with seven pieces of brazen ordinance.” William Lithgow 1643
Herbalist Nicholas Culpeper was summoned from Red Lion House in Spitalfields by Oliver Cromwell to be Surgeon General on the front line during the Civil War
The gate at Shoreditch looking south towards St Leonards Church
The same view today
St Clements Church and King’s Sq gardens, north of Old St, on the line of the defences
Mount Mills off Goswell Rd records the site of Mount Mills Fort
“Standing on the highway near to the Red Bull, this is a large and singular fortification, having a fort above, and within a fort. The lowest consisting of five angles, two whereof towards the fields are each of them thrice parted, having as many great cannon, with a flanking piece from a hid corner, the upper fort standing circular is furnished with eleven pieces of cannon” William Lithgow 1643
Mount Mills Fort from a broadside of 1643
Northampton Sq on the line of the defences
This reservoir in Claremont Sq occupies the site of Fort Royal
” Continuing to Islington-hill, where there is erected a most rare and most admirable fortification called Strawes Fort, but now Fort Royall. It hath eight angles and a spacious interlading distance between each of the cornered bulwarkes. This fort is marvellous persicuous and prospective both for city and country, commanding all the other inferior fortifications near and about that part of the enclining ground.” William Lithgow 1643
Wenceslas Hollar’s drawing of the view south towards the City from Fort Royal c.1644
Great Ormond St on the line of the defences
Southampton Fort stood north of Bedford Sq
“Consisting of two divided bulwarks, and each of them garnished with four demi-culverines of brasse with the intervening distance fortified. The two former bodies are pallosaded, double-ditched, and the middle division whereof barricaded with stakes a yard high and each of them hooked up with three counter thwarting pike of iron.” William Lithgow 1643
Eastcastle St north of Oxford St
Mount St in Mayfair on the line of defences
These mounds running parallel to Park Lane are vestigial remains of Civil War earthworks
John Roque’s map of 1746 records the earthworks in Hyde Park
The western wall of Buckingham Palace garden follows the line of Civil War defences
Adam Dant consults his notes in Grosvenor Gardens
Vincent Sq on the line of the defences
Oliver Cromwell presides outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster
Charles I commemorated at the Banqueting House in Whitehall
Print of the execution, 1649 (reproduced courtesy of British Museum)
At Horseguards, the number ten on the clock is permanently marked in black in remembrance of the hour of the time of the execution of Charles I
We are indebted to the scholarship of David Flintham in preparing this feature
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In City Of London Churchyards
In the churchyard of St Dunstan’s in the East, Idol Lane
If ever I should require a peaceful walk when the crowds are thronging in Brick Lane and Columbia Rd, then I simply wander over to the City of London where the streets are empty at weekends and the many secret green enclaves of the churches are likely to be at my sole disposal. For centuries the City was densely populated, yet the numberless dead in the ancient churchyards are almost the only residents these days.
Christopher Wren rebuilt most of the City churches after the Great Fire upon the irregularly shaped medieval churchyards and it proved the ideal challenge to develop his eloquent vocabulary of classical architecture. Remarkably, there are a couple of churches still standing which predate the Fire while a lot of Wren’s churches were destroyed in the Blitz, but for all those that are intact, there are many of which only the tower or an elegant ruin survives to grace the churchyard. And there are also yards where nothing remains of the church, save a few lone tombstones attesting to the centuries of human activity in that place. Many of these sites offer charismatic spaces for horticulture, rendered all the more appealing in contrast to the sterile architectural landscape of the modern City that surrounds them.
I often visit St Olave’s in Mincing Lane, a rare survivor of the Fire, and when you step down from the street, it as if you have entered a country church. Samuel Pepys lived across the road in Seething Lane and was a member of the congregation here, referring to it as “our own church.” He is buried in a vault beneath the communion table and there is a spectacular gate from 1658, topped off with skulls, which he walked through to enter the secluded yard. Charles Dickens also loved this place, describing it as “my best beloved churchyard.”
“It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious, strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone … the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence, there is attraction of repulsion for me … and, having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight.” he wrote in “The Uncommercial Traveller.”
A particular favourite of mine is the churchyard of St Dunstan’s in the East in Idol Lane. The ruins of a Wren church have been overgrown with wisteria and creepers to create a garden of magnificent romance, where almost no-one goes. You can sit here within the nave surrounded by high walls on all sides, punctuated with soaring Gothic lancet windows hung with leafy vines which filter the sunlight in place of the stained glass that once was there.
Undertaking a circuit of the City, I always include the churchyard of St Mary Aldermanbury in Love Lane with its intricate knot garden and bust of William Shakespeare, commemorating John Hemminge and Henry Condell who published the First Folio and are buried there. The yard of the bombed Christchurch Greyfriars in Newgate St is another essential port of call for me, to admire the dense border planting that occupies the space where once the congregation sat within the shell of Wren’s finely proportioned architecture. In each case, the introduction of plants to fill the space and countermand the absence in the ruins of these former churches – where the parishioners have gone long ago – has created lush gardens of rich poetry.
There are so many churchyards in the City of London that there are always new discoveries to be made by the casual visitor, however many times you return. And anyone can enjoy the privilege of solitude in these special places, you only have to have the curiosity and desire to seek them out for yourself.
In the yard of St Michael, Cornhill.
In the yard of St Dunstan’s in the East, Idol Lane.
At St Dunstan’s in the East, leafy vines filter the sunlight in place of stained glass.
In the yard of St Olave’s, Mincing Lane.
This is the gate that Samuel Pepys walked through to enter St Olave’s and of which Charles Dickens wrote in The Uncommercial Traveller – “having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight.”
Dickens described this as ““my best beloved churchyard.”
In the yard of St Michael Paternoster Royal, College St.
In the yard of St Lawrence Jewry-next-Guildhall, Gresham St.
In the yard of St Mary Aldermanbury, Love Lane, this bust of William Shakespeare commemorates John Hemminge and Henry Condell who published the First Folio and are buried here.
In the yard of London City Presbyterian Church, Aldersgate St.
In the yard of Christchurch Greyfriars, Newgate St, the dense border planting occupies the space where once the congregation sat within the shell of Wren’s finely proportioned architecture.
In the yard of the Guildhall Church of St Benet, White Lion Hill.
In St Paul’s Churchyard.
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Real Life For Children, 1819
Before the internet and before photography, the first means of cheap mass-distribution of images was by woodcuts. These appealing examples, enlarged from originals no larger than a thumbnail, are selected from a set of chapbooks, Pictures Of Real Life For Children, Printed & Sold by R.Harrild, Great Eastcheap, London. Believed to date from around 1819, the series included some Cries Of London and, in spite of the occasionally pious text, these are sympathetic and characterful portrayals of working people.
While some are intended as illustrations of professional types, such as Mr Prescription the physician, others are clearly portraits, such as the Rhubarb Seller who was also included in William Marshall Craig’s Itinerant Traders of 1804. Although we shall never know who they all were, the expressive nature of each of these lively cuts – achieved with such economy of means – leads me to suspect that many were based upon specific individuals who were recognisable to readers in London at that time.
Man with his Dancing Bear. This curious sight is frequently seen about the streets of this great city, and is far from being the most contemptible.
Mary Fairlop was always industrious, she rises with the lark to pursue her labour.
Mr Prescription, the physician, is taking the round among his patients. He is pleased to see Master Goodchild so well. By taking his physic as he ought, he is just recovered from a dangerous illness.
This is Mr Ridewell, the smart little groom, who is noted for keeping himself, his stable, and his master’s horse clean.
The Farmer.
The Milkmaid.
Hair Brooms.
Clothes Props. “Buy a Prop, a prop for your clothes.”
“Pickled Salmon, Newcastle Salmon.” Here comes Johnny Rollins, known for selling Newcastle salmon.
“Fine Yorkshire Cakes, Muffins and Crumpets.” In addition to his vocal abilities, this man has lately introduced a bell, by which means the streets are saluted every morning and afternoon with vocal and instrumental music.
“Rhubarb! Rhubarb!” This is a well-known character in our metropolis. He is a Turk as his habit bespeaks him. With his box before him, he offers his rhubarb to every passerby.
“Live Cod, dainty fresh Cod.” Much praise is due to the Fishman for his honest endeavours to obtain a livelihood. At break of day, he is seen at Billingsgate buying fish, and before noon he has been heard in most parts of the metropolis.
“Old Clothes, any shoes, hats or old Clothes.”
This is John Honeysuckle, the industrious gardener, with a myrtle in his hand, the produce of his garden. He is justly celebrated for his beautiful bowpots and nosegays all round the country.
The Nut Woman.
“Beer!” This is the publican with the nice white apron. I like this man’s beer, he keeps the Coach & Horses and his pots always look so clean.
This porter, for his industry and obliging disposition, is respected.
The Cooper is just now with adze in hand. hooping a large wine cask, which is part of a large order he has received from a merchant who trades to the East and West Indies.
The Pedlar.
The Organ Grinder.
The Watchman.
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
More of Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
Malcolm Tremain’s Spitalfields, Then & Now
I took a walk with my camera in the footsteps of Malcolm Tremain to visit the locations of his photographs from the early eighties and discover what time has wrought …
Passage from Allen Gardens to Brick Lane
Spital Sq, entrance to former Central Foundation School now Galvin Restaurant
In Spital Sq
In Brune St
In Toynbee St
Corner of Grey Eagle St & Quaker St
In Quaker St
Steps of Brick Lane Mosque
In Puma Court
Corner of Wilkes St & Princelet St
In Wilkes St
Jewish Soup Kitchen in Brune St
Outside the former night shelter in Crispin St, now student housing for LSE
In Crispin St
In Bell Lane
In Parliament Court
In Artillery Passage
In Artillery Passage
In Middlesex St
In Bishopsgate
In Wentworth St
In Fort St
In Allen Gardens
At Pedley St Bridge
Black & white photographs copyright © Malcolm Tremain
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Andrew Scott’s East End, Then & Now
Val Perrin’s Brick Lane, Then & Now
A Walk With Suresh Singh
We are very proud to be the publishers of A MODEST LIVING, Memoirs of a Cockney Sikh, London’s first Sikh biography, telling the story of one family in Spitalfields over seventy years. In celebration of the book, author Suresh Singh will be in conversation Stefan Dickers at the National Portrait Gallery on Friday 7th June at 7pm. (Click here for tickets)
In the meantime, Suresh and I enjoyed a ramble round Spitalfields recently and he showed me some of the places that hold most meaning for him.
“I love Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East. It was the library I used to go to every Friday when I was at primary school. You could sit and read. It was just lovely. Upstairs was the art and music library. They had big oversize books of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, the Impressionists, Matisse, Degas and Le Corbusier’s book about Chandigarh.
It was amazing to have this in Brick Lane, at the end of my street. You were given freedom to look at the books and could borrow twelve books and five records at a time. The librarian in the music library would order whatever you requested. Even if you asked for ‘Yes’ album, he would get it by next week. My dad had a record player and I learnt to be really careful with a record because when you returned it they would meticulously check it.
The library was a whole world. It taught me to read quietly. It exposed me to books that I might never have found. My mum and dad could not read or write. We had no books at home. I liked the art section because the books had pictures and I learnt that pictures told stories as well as words. The librarians always helped me and I could spend hours there. It was a sanctuary from the mayhem outside, a kind of university of the ghetto.”
“Christ Church School, Brick Lane, was my primary school. I loved it when I came back after a long visit to India at six years old. I have frightening memories of it too, as the place I had to go to after the freedom I had experienced in our village. My mum used to walk me here every day and I would walk home for dinner at Princelet St and come back again. School dinners were so bland but my mum gave me dal and roti.
The water fountain used to work and we could drink from it. I remember it as so high, my friends had to give me a lift up so I could drink from it. You pressed the button and it worked. There were little fish that lived in there.
Later on, Eric Elstob – a friend whom I worked for in the renovation of his house in Fournier St – was treasurer of the school and he restored the railings, which was lovely. A couple of years ago, they were repainting them blue and I asked them to paint a bit of my bike with the same colour to remind me of the great memories I have of this school. We used to have great jumble sales at Christmas. You could climb through the school and out through the back, past the gardens of the houses in Fournier St and Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church into Itchy Park, and out into Commercial St and Spitalfields Market. I loved it because it was a backstreet school.”
“I have fond memories of the rectory at 2 Fournier St when Eddie Stride was Rector. It is one of the few Hawksmoor houses. I helped Eddie wash the steps with Vim when the tramps pissed all over them. There used to be queues outside and Irene Stride made sandwiches for them.
It was a place where Eddie made me feel very welcome. I rang the bell or knocked on the door, and he would always open it to me. The door was never closed. I could always go in and play in the garden. Later on, there were big power meetings at the rectory when Eddie became the chairman of the Festival of Light. So you would meet people like Malcolm Muggeridge, Mary Whitehouse, Cliff Richard and Lord Longford coming and going. It was always an open house.
I was brought up as a Sikh but there were no gurdwaras in Spitalfields, and my dad said ‘You need some moral purpose,’ so he send us to Sunday school and that was how I became friends with Eddie Stride. He was a great friend to our family. He helped me get grants for further education from the Sir John Cass Foundation which led me to study architecture. I loved that time and these steps mean a lot to me. It is amazing how Vim can clean Portland stone. ”
“I always knew the Hanbury Hall as 22a Hanbury St. In those days, Christ Church was closed because it was unsafe and this was used for services instead. There was a youth club at the top of the building on Thursdays and Fridays and we had our Sunday school in the hall.
Because it was built as a Huguenot chapel, everyone used to say that this hall is older than the church and sometimes that used to scare me late at night. There were these big wooden doors that closed with a hasp and I always feared someone might come down the winding stone staircase. Later, when I was doing carpentry work, Eddie gave me the task of housing the remains of the smallpox victims that they found when they were cleaning out the crypt.
When I started a group, we were allowed to rehearse in the vestry at the back. This place was a playground for me but also a church where services were held until the eighties. Then I helped move the furniture from here back to Christ Church. I remember we put the communion table on casters and I had to clear out all the copies of Lord Longford’s pornography report which were being stored in the church.
This hall was a treasure because it had a lovely atmosphere but also a haunted atmosphere too. It was the main meeting point for all of us in Spitalfields at that time.”
“Once, the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane was a dark scary corridor for me. It was my route from my home in Princelet St to my secondary school, Daneford in Bethnal Green. At that time, it used to smell of hops and it was dark and dirty. I got beaten up by a bunch of fascist skinheads at the corner of the brewery where it meets Buxton St. I still try to avoid this route but like a magnet it draws me through. I used to run through or cycle because to go round the other way was much longer and sometimes more scary- you would have to cut past Shoreditch Station and round the back to Cheshire St.
So this was the quickest route but it was like going through a factory. The brewery was always there in my childhood. The smell and the noise were twenty-four hours, and it was always dark beneath the brewery walls. The brewery was a landmark and I remember smoke coming out of that chimney. It was a place that you had no choice but to pass through. At the other end of the brewery was where the skinheads hung out but at this end was the Bengali area where I felt safer. Every day I hoped I would not get my head kicked in as I went to school.
As a kid, I found these long brewery walls interminable. I walked and walked and thought, ‘Will I ever get through to the end?’ It still scares me in a way.”
“I used to pass Franta Belsky’s sculpture in Bethnal Green every day when I walked along the little passageway to Daneford Secondary School. Today, I am wearing the tank top my mum knitted when I was eleven and I remember wearing it to a non-school uniform day all those years ago.
I always used to see this sculpture out of the side of my eye. My friends would say, ‘You go on Singhey, I dare you to touch her breasts and come back down again.’ But slowly I began to appreciate the beauty of it and began looking at books of Henry Moore and David Smith. It was a lovely thing to see before you went to school every day. It comforted me to see a woman and her baby because I thought, ‘That’s how my mum cares for me.’ It gave me a sense of security. I thought, ‘How amazing that we have a piece of sculpture outside our school.’ It made me feel proud because of the sculpture. My dad used to take me to Hyde Park where there were Henry Moores next to the Serpentine. I thought, ‘We’re on a par with the West End here in Bethnal Green.’
I slowly started loving it. I loved her plait and it reminded me of when I had a topknot. I appreciated it in different types of light and I still love it today.”
Suresh Singh & Jagir Kaur at 38 Princelet St last summer (Photograph by Patricia Niven)
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Click here to order a signed copy of A MODEST LIVING for £20
Underneath Smithfield Market
A train runs beneath Smithfield Market
As one of those who fought to save Smithfield General Market from demolition five years ago, I was delighted have the opportunity last week of exploring the infinite dark recesses of this vast structure which extends deep underground. This was the first time I have been inside Horace Jones’ market building of 1868 and it was a heart-stopping experience to enter his soaring iron cathedral and walk beneath the vast dome at last.
If events had turned out differently in 2014, this magnificence would all have been destroyed with only the facade remaining upon the front of a steel office block. So it was gratifying to visit now as a guest of the Museum of London who are taking it over as their new home, adopting a policy of ‘light touch’ in their treatment of the old building.
In announcing the outcome of the Public Enquiry into the Smithfield Market proposals, the Secretary of State criticised the City of London for deliberately allowing Horace Jones’ beautiful market to fall into decay and disrepair. Readers will be pleased to learn the City of London is now paying for extensive and expensive repairs which are underway.
When I arrived, the traders’ pavilions that had accumulated to fill the market floor were being dismantled to reveal the open space for the first time since the nineteenth century – this majestic hall will be where all visitors enter the new museum. The only major architectural decision taken here regards the location of the staircase leading down to the subterranean galleries below. After some discussion of a central spiral staircase under the dome, permanently restricting the possibility of displays, a decision has been taken to cut a straight staircase along the north side of the building leaving the ground floor clear for exhibitions.
The great drama lies beneath. Here is an enormous black underground cavern, wider than the market above, with a vaulted roof of brick, grimy from steam trains. This was constructed as a railway station where trains from the London docks once brought meat which arrived from across the world. Deliveries were unloaded onto carts that drove up the ramp to the market above.
As you pause to contemplate the wonder of it, a diabolic rumble fills the darkness. It is a train coming! You stand in the darkness as a Thameslink train full of commuters rattles past, coming from Blackfriars on its way to Farringdon. The passengers sit preoccupied in their lit carriages, unaware of the watcher observing them from the darkness. One day, these commuters will peer out from their windows and discover they can see directly into the galleries of the Museum of London and, one day, visitors to the museum will be able to observe trains passing from a window in the gallery.
Beyond this empty hangar, lies another deep space with brick arches soaring overhead and dripping vaults receding into the velvet blackness of history. The moisture that permeates the structure evidences the presence of the River Fleet flowing below. You stand beneath London, between the underground trains and the subterranean river. You are at the heart of the city. It is dark. It is a space of infinite mutability. It is a place with soul, where the past lingers. It is a natural home for a museum of London.
This concrete dome was constructed post-war to replace the original destroyed in the Blitz
The rare ‘phoenix columns’ that support the roof are hollow, used in preference to cast iron, to minimise the weight of the structure which sits over a tube line
First floor pavilions added to the building as traders offices are currently being removed
A spiral staircase leads to an office that no longer exists
Hanging fireplaces attest to former first floor offices
Cast iron racks once supported rails for displaying meat
The agglomeration of traders pavilions on the ground floor was known as ‘the village’
Abandoned grinding wheel for sharpening knives
Ancient dripping brickwork indicates the vicinity of the River Fleet flowing beneath
Thameslink rails stored under the market
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