The Pointe Shoe Makers Of Hackney
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Photographer Patricia Niven and Novelist Sarah Winman visited the Freed of London factory in Well St to create these portraits of the Pointe Shoe Makers, an elite band of highly-skilled craftsmen who make the satin slippers worn by the world’s greatest ballerinas.
It takes two to three years to become a fully trained Pointe Shoe Maker. Hardly surprising, as each shoe is hand-made and two thirds of these shoes (including the toe ‘blocks’ themselves) are made to a Dancer’s individual specifications. Such specifications are printed onto dockets which the Makers work by. One docket was quite illegible to me – a shorthand code with the only clear words: Hessian, strong, slight taper.
There is something inaccessible and mysterious about this world – from the Makers’ symbols, to the language of the shoe, to the exclusive world of the finished product. And yet, I found the Makers to be a pragmatic group of men, into football not dance, who have become blasé about praise and who all refer to the making of these shoes as a job, irrespective of the beauty, the artistry of the finished product. They live in a world of chiaroscuro, where prima ballerinas, surrounded by bodyguards, turn up in limousines to applaud them whilst they stand at their benches six days a week producing nearly forty shoes a day, a quarter of a million shoes a year.
I asked each man if he had ever tried on a ballet shoe to get a sense of the feel – Never! – Even more remarkable then, to think that each shoe is made by touch, look, and imagination alone.
I asked each man whether he had ever been to the ballet.
I asked each man whether he calls himself a Pointe Shoe Maker or a Shoe Maker.
I asked the Maker Taksim (Anchor) what he would like people to know about his work.
He said, “I wish people could try this job. This is the hardest job I’ve ever done. My hands go numb, and I can’t feel them. Over time you get used to the pain.”
I said, “That’s what ballet dancers say about their feet.”
He said,”Really? So, their feet are our hands.”
– Sarah Winman
Taksim known as ‘Anchor’
“I’ve been here for fifteen years. I love my job and no-one tells me what to do. It came easy to me because I used to work in the leather trade and put that experience to good use. I know how the material works and moves.
I haven’t been to the ballet but I have seen my dancers on television – Leanne Benjamin, Jane Taylor to name two. I make Jane Taylor one hundred pairs of shoes a year, all 5 ½ X heel pins. I am proud to make shoes for her. I have met all my prima ballerinas and had photos taken with them. They appreciate us I think.
I have no time to go to the ballet because I work six days a week. I need to rest and put my feet up. I’m a big football fan, enjoying the tennis too, at the moment. We don’t tell people we make ballet shoes, we are just shoe makers. I make thirty-eight pairs a day and am booked up until mid December.
I was born in Cyprus. I never imagined I would have done this. When I came here thirty years ago, I expected to work in a fish and chip shop.”
Taksim’s ‘anchor.’
Taksim’s ‘anchor’ in place upon a pair of his shoes – ballerinas have been known to scratch off their Maker’s symbol to keep him exclusively for her!
Taksim’s work bench.
Fred known as ‘F’
“I was in-between jobs and went to Freed in Mercer St in Covent Garden and learned to be a Maker. I had no idea what I was getting into. My friends all worked in warehouses or were builders so I didn’t tell ‘em what I did until I’d been making shoes for a year.
Have I been to the ballet? No, you’re havin’ a larf, aren’t you?!
When I made my first shoe, I was elated, tell you the truth, that I’d done something. I started off unloading lorries, and it took three months before I got on the bench. Then did soft toes, then hard toes.
I make forty pairs a day and I have a waiting list. I call myself a shoe maker. When you hear a prima ballerina say you’re great, it’s wonderful. Then you hear it so many times…and well…
There’s really nothing glamorous about standing at a bench for ten hours. Do I enjoy making shoes? Look at me. I’m sixty-two and sweating!”
Fred’s ‘F’ on the sole a pair of his shoes.
Fred’s work bench.
Ray known as ‘Crown’
“We are given symbols when we start making shoes, so that if anything is wrong with the shoe they know who to blame! I have been here for twenty-six years. My father-in-law got me a job interview here. I get satisfaction from making the whole shoe myself. Other shoes are made by lots of people.
I love that dancers are wearing my shoes.
You are trained and learn the basics. People teach you their ways and sometimes those ways are conflicting. Then I had to find my own way. There’s a lot of trial and error. I found a style that I like and the dancers like, and I’ve kept to it.
Every dancer likes a different shoe. Each Maker is different – one might use more paste than the other. But dancers come back and stay with you for life. They will tell you what they need.
I’ve never been to the ballet, but if I watch it on the television I look at their feet. I know how to craft the shoe by touch, feel, look. I instinctively know how much paste to use, how much hessian. If the dancer wants a light block she’ll get one. If she wants a shoe with more give I do that. The dancers are fascinated to meet the makers. I make forty pairs a day. I don’t have much time off. People wait weeks to get a shoe from me. I make a lot of shoes for the New York City Ballet.
I love my job. I could never have dreamt of this, or of having my photo taken with dancers or even of someone writing down what I’m saying.
I was born around here – grew up bit with my dad and a bit with my mum. It was all a bit of an adventure. My two daughters take up my time. I made a pair of soft toes for my six year old girl. They don’t do ballet now. They have found their own interests.”
Ray’s work bench.
Ray’s ‘Crown’ on the sole of a pair of his shoes.
Daniel known as ‘Butterfly’
“My wife has been a Pointe Shoe Fitter in the Freed shop since she was sixteen. She was a dancer, went away and travelled the world. We met when she was in the Philippines, and she brought me back with her and we had babies. She went back to the shop and four months ago I started to make shoes here. I have a good teacher in Tksim, he’s a Master.
I do enjoy it. I always found it fascinating when my wife talked about dancing and shows and make-up. I always had the curiosity. Always thought, I want to be part of all that.
I haven’t been to the ballet yet, but I’ve watched it on Youtube.
Since I’ve been making shoes, I look at the dancer’s feet. I used to be a tight-rope walker and a trapeze artist. When I was a trapeze artist, I had to wear a leather glove. We made the leather gloves ourselves and the leather was so important. I understand how the leather is important for the shoe, I’d never realised it before.
I will call myself a Pointe Shoe Maker.I make twenty-four shoes a day. It has come naturally to me, but it’s very hard work. My hands and my shoulders ache. This here is the first ever shoe I made here. It gives me great satisfaction because it is a very important shoe – because this is a shoe that is not to be worn everyday in the street.
It’s craftsmanship.”
Daniel’s first shoe with his ‘Butterfly’ mark on the sole.
Daniel’s mark.
At Daniel’s work bench.
Alan known as ‘Triangle’
“I started next door in Despatch and then I was given the opportunity to come here and make shoes. I made my first pair of shoes nine years ago. Dancers come here and they thank us and applaud us.
I have been to the ballet once. I can’t remember what it was – it wasn’t really my cup of tea. I’m a DJ and prefer a different dance. My kids do ballet and I’ve made one of them a pair of shoes
I call myself a shoe maker.
If I wasn’t here, I would be painting or decorating or a barman.
We don’t see what other people see. You see something beautiful. I see a finished product, a skilled job well done.”
One of Alan’s shoes with his ‘triangle’ on the sole.
An order with the customer’s specifications.
When the block and platform have been created – this is the moment when it rests ghostly on Pointe, unaided, perfectly balanced, dancing its own breathtaking dance.
Alan’s work bench
Darren Plume, Quality Controller & Manager of the London Makers
“My grandfather worked as a storeman here thirty years ago. I left school and joined here when I was fifteen and a half years old. I started off unloading lorries, making tea, that sort of thing. I’ve been here twenty-six years now and have done mostly everything. I took over jobs as people left or retired. I never thought about leaving because I’m happy with what I do.
It’s the people who made me want to stay. I had a lot of father figures. I’ve known Ray (Crown) twenty-six years and we see each other more than we see our own families. My mates used to think I was nuts working here because they were all on building sites, but then they saw the dancers who came in and they changed their minds.
The Makers know more about the shoes than I do. The shoes go into the ovens overnight to bake and harden the block and, first thing in the morning, I check every one of them – that’s my responsibility. I also liaise with the dancers, because if they have a problem they’ll ask to visit us.
Once I used to be in awe of them, now I think they might be a little in awe of us. No shoes, no dance. The dancers rely on us a lot. Their Maker would only have to get an injury and psychologically it could affect them quite a bit.
I’ve been to the ballet twice. I saw Swan Lake at the ENO in the round five years ago. We took a Maker’s bench down there and made shoes in the foyer for the audience to see what we did. Three, four hundred people wanted to shake our hands.
When I was watching the ballet I was only looking at the shoes.
This job’s a bit like a fairytale. You can get caught up in the moment. Some days it flows, some days it’s a pig’s ear and some days you’re as happy as Larry. The most important thing as a manager is to listen to people. Then buy ‘em a coffee and make ‘em happy.”
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
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My London Festival Of Architecture Lecture
The ruins of the London Fruit & Wool Exchange, Spitalfields, 2016
As part of London Festival of Architecture, I am participating in an event hosted by SAVE Britain’s Heritage on Wednesday 11th June at 6pm at 77 Cowcross St, EC1M 6EJ, entitled Beyond Carbon: How Embodied Memory Grounds Us In Place. I shall be speaking in response to Simon Henley of architects Henley Halebrown exploring the concept of embodied memory in the loss and reuse of buildings.
Publishing daily posts over the past sixteen years, amounting to over 5000 stories, I have written a vast archive of memory including more than eight hundred oral histories of Spitalfields and the East End. Naturally this has led to a recognition of the value and significance of buildings as receptacles of memory. In turn, this has given rise to the many heritage campaigns which you have read about in these pages over the years. I shall be reflecting upon some of these stories in my lecture.
The former Whitechapel Bell Foundry, 2025
A London Herbal
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Today I publish these excerpts from Margaret Willes‘ book The Domestic Herbal, Plants for the Home in the Seventeenth Century published by the Bodleian Library 
Mugwort
Artemisia vulgaris
London grew rapidly from the late fifteen-hundreds, becoming the largest city in western Europe by the end of the next century. The possession of a garden was a luxury for the few, so markets were a vital source of fruit and vegetables for the table, along with herbs for seasoning and remedies.
The number of doctors in London in relation to the population was tiny, no more than a hundred were licensed by the Royal College of Physicians in the seventeenth century. Their treatments were not only expensive but sometimes drastic, based on purgative drugs and bloodletting. One woman summed up this situation in trenchant terms, ‘Kitchen physic I believe is more proper than the Doctor’s filthy physic.’ Housewives usually had charge of the health of their families and needed to know what herbs they required for a range of ailments.
Two herbals in particular offered a comprehensive survey. John Gerard, a barber surgeon, compiled his Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes that was publishedin 1597. This provided not only information about the medicinal properties of herbs, fruit, vegetables and flowers, but also descriptions of their cultivation, often based on his own experience in his garden in Holborn. His book is huge, with over eighteen hundred woodcuts and so expensive that copies were passed down through generations just like the family bible.
Five years later came The English Physitian, a herbal by the radical apothecary, Nicholas Culpeper, who had his garden in Spitalfields. The subtitle, An Astrologo-Physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation indicates his interest in the influence of the planets on medicine. His book had no illustrations because he wanted it priced at a few pence so that it could be widely available.
The seventeenth century saw women beginning to write their own household manuals. One was Mary Doggett’s, compiled at the very end of the century and now held in the British Library. She was the first wife of Thomas, theatre manager of Drury Lane Theatre and fondly remembered today for the annual Doggett Coat & Badge race for Thames watermen. Mary’s book includes a wide range of recipes for cooking, distilling and brewing, for medicines, and care of the house.
Unlike many women of her time, Mary Doggett could read and write. Margaret Pepys, mother of the diarist Samuel, was a laundry maid who may well not have had her letters. But her son refers to Margaret sending out her maid to buy herbs from the market in Cheapside to cure his mouth ulcer. No doubt she learnt this remedy from her mother. Pepys does not specify the herbs but an early eighteenth-century recipe for mouth ulcers recommends rue, red sage, brambles and the leaves of ivy and honeysuckle added to vinegar and honey.
Garden Rue
Ruta Hortensis
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing seventeenth-century London households was the threat of bubonic plague. Brought by black rats on ships, it affected ports and spread to country villages as fleas were transferred to their brown cousins. There had been many visitations but the most devastating reached London in December 1664, known as the Great Plague.
The herb believed to be most efficacious against the plague was rue, known as the herb of grace because a bunch was added to holy water for exorcisms. John Gerard recommended mashing the leaves with the kernel of walnuts and figs as an antidote. A recipe ‘most esteemed of in the last Great Visitation’ was included in a printed cookery book seven years after the Great Plague. It took rue and sage and mixed them in wine with spices and a pennyworth of Mithridate. This last ingredient is named after Mithridates, ruler of Pontus in the first century BC, who was obsessed with the fear of being poisoned and had a remedy made up from no less than fifty-five herbs and spices. Apothecaries sold Mithridate, sometimes under the name Venetian Treacle.
The other most-feared disease was smallpox. While the plague proved most deadly for poorer people, living in close quarters, smallpox was no respecter of status, swooping upon the highest in the land. Several members of the royal family died from the disease, including Queen Mary in 1694 aged only thirty-two. Recipes for treating smallpox are rare, but one seventeenth century remedy, Lady Allen’s Water, used a range of herbs and flowers from the garden. Among these were powerful medicinal plants, such as henbane with painkilling properties, which was added to liquorice and white wine, and distilled.
Liquorice
Glycyrrhiza glabra
Smallpox left physical scars, particularly cruel when one of the most important signs of beauty was to have a fair, smooth face. One recipe advised that as the scabs of smallpox began to dry out, they should be treated with salves. John Gerard considered oil of figs to be particularly good, while rosewater was often added to bacon fat and applied. Many recipes called for rosewater. Damask roses were recommended because their stronger scent made them ‘fitter for meate and medicine’ according to Gerard. To make rosewater required such a very large amount of petals that country gardens often had beds set aside especially for the cultivation of roses. When Elizabeth I ‘persuaded’ the Bishop of Ely to give up his palace and garden in Holborn to her dancing partner favourite, Sir Christopher Hatton, he demanded that he should receive twenty bushels of rose petals each year. These surely would have been destined for the episcopal stillroom to make up into a water. One recommendation to Londoners was that they should purchase rose petals when there was a glut. Mary Doggett may have done this, although her recipe book includes a note that she purchased rose water for the goodly sum of £2 from her apothecary.
Damask rose
Rosa damascena
Mary used the rosewater in several of her recipes for keeping the house fragrant. One unusual idea was for aromatic beads, taking scented gums and rose water, and mixing them with the buds of Damask roses. These were coloured with lamp black, the soot collected from oil lamps, rolled in the hand with jasmine oil, and given a gloss before they were made into bracelets.
Housewives made up ‘sweet bags’ with flowers and herbs dried, powdered and distilled. Added to this mixture were aromatic gums expensively acquired from apothecaries or grocers, so it had to be long lasting. Unlike our potpourris, which are displayed in open bowls, the mixture would be kept in bags tightly sealed to retain the scent. One herb often used was sweet marjoram, which also featured in nosegays, carried to mask the smells of unwashed crowds, and against the plague.
Keeping houses sweet and clean presented a challenge. Floors were strewn with rushes acquired from barges that brought them to Thameside wharves. Added to these were sweet smelling herbs, such as bay and rosemary, which could be purchased from street vendors, as illustrated in Cries of London. The custom of strewing gradually declined with the century and instead straw matting was laid on floors. Marcus Laroon’s Cries of London of 1687 includes a pedlar offering door mats and strips of matting for the bedroom.
Seller of straw mats by Marcellus Laroon
A century earlier, a Dutch visitor remarked on how much the English appreciate flowers for their homes. Lemnius Levinus in his diary noted ‘altho’ we do trimme up our parlours with green boughes, fresh herbes or vine leaves scented … yet no nation does it more decently, more trimmely, nor more sightly than they do in England’. At Christmas evergreen shrubs and branches were brought in to decorate the house, a tradition that endures.
Orpine
Hylotelephium telephium
There was also a floral tradition at the opposite part of the year, to celebrate the festival of St John the Baptist on 24th June. John Stow in his chronicles of London described how every door was garlanded with birch, fennel, orpine and lilies. Orpine, a sedum, has the alternative names of ‘livelong’ because of its lasting qualities, and ‘midsummer men’ because of its connections with the summer festival. Another herb connected with midsummer was mugwort, which Culpeper attributed to Venus, hastening delivery in childbirth. Along with St John’s Wort, the herb was burnt on St John’s Eve to purify communities, probably one of a series of examples of how a pagan practice was adopted by the Church.
St John’s Wort
Hypericum perforatum
Woodcuts from Gerard’s Herbal © Bodleian Library
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The Pumps Of Old London
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“We never know the worth of water till the well is dry” -Thomas Fuller, 1732
Hardly anyone notices this venerable pump of 1832 in Shoreditch churchyard, yet this disregarded artifact may conceal the reason why everything that surrounds it is there. Reverend Turp of St Leonard’s explained to me that the very name of Shoreditch derives from the buried spring beneath this pump, “suer” being the Anglo-Saxon word for stream.
The Romans made their camp at this spot because of the secure water source and laid out four roads which allowed them to control the entire territory from there – one road led West to Bath, one North to York, one East to Colchester and one South to Chichester. In fact, this water source undermined the foundations of the medieval church and caused it to collapse, leading to the construction of the current building by George Dance but, even then, there were still problems with flooding and the land was built up to counteract this, burying the first seven steps out of ten at the front of the church. Later, human remains from the churchyard seeped into this supply (as in some other gruesome examples) and it was switched over to mains water. Today, the sad old pump in Shoreditch has lost its handle, had its nozzle broken and even its basin is filled with concrete, yet a lone primrose flowers – emblematic of the mystic quality that some associate with these wellsprings, as sources of life itself.
Before the introduction of the mains supply in London, the pumps were a defining element of the city, public water sources that permitted settlement and provided a social focus in each parish. Now, where they remain, they are redundant relics unused for generations, either tolerated for their picturesque qualities or ignored by those heedless of their existence. When I began to research this subject, I found that no attention had been paid to these valiant survivors of another age. So I set out West to seek those other pumps that had caught my attention in my walks around the city and make a gallery for you of the last ones standing.
Holborn is an especially good place to look for old pumps, there I found several fine examples contemporary with the stately Georgian squares, and the Inns of Court proved rewarding hunting ground too. At Lincoln’s Inn, the porter told me they still get their water supply untreated from the Fleet river, encouraging me to explore South of Fleet St at the Temple, although to my disappointment Pump Court no longer has a pump to justify its name.
Up in Soho, at Broadwick St, you will find London’s most notorious pump, the conduit that brought a cholera epidemic killing more than five hundred people in 1854. Now it has been resurrected as a monument to the physician who detected the origin of the infection and had the pump handle removed. Today, the nearest pub bears his name, John Snow. The East End’s most famous specimen, the Aldgate Pump – that I have written of elsewhere in these pages – was similarly responsible for a lethal epidemic, underlining the imperative to deliver a safe water supply, an imperative that ultimately rendered these pumps redundant.
Perhaps the most gracious examples I found were by St Paul’s Cathedral, “Erected by St Faith’s Parish, 1819,” and in Gray’s Inn Square. Both possess subtle expressive detail as sculptures that occupy their locations with presence, and in common with all their pitiful fellows they stand upright like tireless flunkies – ever hopeful and eager to serve – quite oblivious to our indifference.
In Shoreditch churchyard, this sad old pump of 1832 has lost its handle, had its nozzle broken and basin filled with concrete, and is attended by a lone primrose.
In Queen’s Sq, Holborn this pump of 1840 has the coats of arms of St Andrew and St George.
In Bedford Row, Holborn, this is contemporary with its colleague in Queens Sq.
In Gray’s Inn Sq – where, in haste, a passing lawyer mislaid a red elastic band.
This appealing old pump in Staple Inn is a pastiche dated 1937.
This is the previous pump in the location above, more utilitarian and less picturesque.
In New Square, Lincoln’s Inn.
Between Paternoster Sq and St Paul’s Churchyard.
Outside the Royal Exchange in Cornhill. The text on the pump reads, “On this spot a well was first made and a house of correction built thereon by Henry Wallis Mayor of London in the year 1282.” Designed by architect Nathaniel Wright and erected in 1799.
Aldgate Pump marks the boundary between the East End and the City of London. The faucet in the shape of a wolf commemorates the last of these beasts to be shot outside the walls of the City.
London’s most notorious pump in Broadwick St, Soho. Five hundred people died in the cholera epidemic occasioned by this pump in 1854. Reinstated in 1992 to commemorate medical research in the service of public health, the nearby pub is today named “John Snow” after the physician who traced the outbreak to this pump. A red granite kerbstone across the road marks the site of the original pump.
Archive image courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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George Gladwell’s Columbia Rd Market
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This is George Gladwell (1929-2020) selling his Busy Lizzies from the back of a van at Columbia Rd in the early seventies, drawing the attention of bystanders to the quality of his plants and captivating his audience with a bold dramatic gesture of presentation worthy of Hamlet holding up a skull. George began trading at the market in 1949 and it is my delight to publish this selection of his old photographs.
There is an air of informality about the flower market as it is portrayed in George’s pictures. The metal trolleys that all the traders use today are barely in evidence, instead plants are sold from trestle tables or directly off the ground – pitched as auctions – while seedlings come straight from the greenhouse in wooden trays, and customers carry away their bare-rooted plants wrapped in newspaper. Consequently, the atmosphere is of a smaller local market than we know today, with less stalls and just a crowd of people from the neighbourhood.
You can see the boarded-up furniture factories, that once defined Bethnal Green, and Ravenscroft Buildings, subsequently demolished to create Ravenscroft Park, both still in evidence in the background – and I hope sharp-eyed readers may also recognise a few traders who continue working in Columbia Rd Market today.
Over the years, many thousands of images have been taken of Columbia Rd Flower Market, but George Gladwell’s relaxed photographs are special because they capture the drama of the market seen through the eyes of an insider.
“I arrived in this lonely little street in the East End with only boarded-up shops in it at seven o’clock one Sunday morning in February 1949. And I went into Sadie’s Cafe where you could get a whopping great mug of cocoa, coffee or tea, and a thick slice of bread and dripping – real comfort food. Then I went out onto the street again at nine o’ clock, and a guy turned up with a horse and cart loaded with flowers, followed by a flatback lorry also loaded with plants.
At the time, I had a 1933 ambulance and I drove that around to join them, and we were the only three traders until someone else turned up with a costermonger’s barrow of cut flowers. There were a couple more horse and carts that joined us and, around eleven thirty, a few guys came along with baskets on their arms with a couple of dozen bunches of carnations to sell, which was their day’s work.
More traders began turning over up over the next few months until the market was full. There were no trolleys then, everything was on the floor. Years ago, it wasn’t what you call “instant gardening,” it was all old gardeners coming to buy plants to grow on to maturity. It was easy selling flowers then, though if you went out of season it was disappointing, but I never got discouraged – you just have to wait.
Mother’s Day was the beginning of the season and Derby Day was the finish, and it still applies today. The serious trading is between those two dates and the rest of the year is just ticking over. In June, it went dead until it picked up in September, then it got quite busy until Bonfire Night. And from the first week of December, you had Christmas Trees, holly and mistletoe, and the pot plant trade.
I had a nursery and I lived in Billericay, and I was already working in Romford, Chelmsford, Epping, Rochester, Maidstone and Watford Markets. A friend of mine – John – he didn’t have driving licence, so he asked me to drive him up on a Sunday, and each week I came up to Columbia Rd with him and I brought some of my own plants along too, because there was a space next to his pitch.
My first licenced pitch was across from the Royal Oak. I moved there in 1958, because John died and I inherited his pitches, but I let the other four go. In 1959, the shops began to unboard and people took them on here and there. That was around the time public interest picked up because formerly it was a secret little market. It became known through visitors to Petticoat Lane, they’d walk around and hear about it. It was never known as “Columbia Rd Flower Market” until I advertised it by that name.
It picked up even more in the nineteen sixties when the council introduced the rule that we had to come every four weeks or lose our licences, because then we had to trade continuously. In those days, we were all professional growers who relied upon the seasons at Columbia Rd. Although we used to buy from the Dutch, you had to have a licence and you were only allowed a certain amount, so that was marginal. It used to come by train – pot plants, shrubs and herbaceous plants. During the war, agriculture became food production, and fruit trees planted before the war had matured nicely. They sold masses of these at the Maidstone plant auctions and I could pick them up for next to nothing and sell them at Columbia Rd for two thousand per cent profit. Those were happy times!
In the depression at the end of the nineteen fifties, a lot of nurserymen sold their plots for building land because they couldn’t make it pay and it made the supply of plants quite scarce. So those of us who could grow our own did quite well but, although I did a mail order trade from my nursery, it wasn’t sufficient to make ends meet. Hobby traders joined the market then and they interfered with our trade because we were growers and kept our stock from week to week, but they would sell off all their stock cheap each week to get their money back. I took a job driving heavy haulage and got back for Saturday and Sunday. I had to do it because I had quite a big family, four children.
In the seventies, I was the first to use the metal trolleys that everyone uses now. My associates said I would never make it pay because I hocked myself up to do it. At the same time, plants were getting plastic containers, whereas before we used to sell bare roots which made for dirty pitches, so that was progress. All the time we were getting developments in different kinds of plants coming from abroad. You could trade in these and forget growing your own plants, but I never did.
Then in the nineties we had problems with rowdy traders and customers coming at four in the morning, which upset the residents and we were threatened with closure by the council. We had a committee and I was voted Chairman of the Association. We negotiated with the neighbours and agreed trading hours and parking for the market, so all were happy in the end.
It’s been quite happy and fulfilling, what I’ve finished up with is quite a nice property – something I always wanted. I like hard work, whether physical or mental. I used to sell plants at the side of the road when I was seven, and I used to work on farms helping with the milking at five in the morning before I went to school. I studied architecture and yet, as a job, I was never satisfied with it, I preferred the outdoor life and the physical part of it. Having a pitch is always interesting – it’s freedom as well.”
Albert Harnett
Colin Roberts
Albert Playle
Bert Shilling
Ernie Mokes
The magnificently named Carol Eden.
Fred Harnett, Senior
Herbie Burridge
George Burridge, Junior
Jim Burridge, Senior
Kenny Cramer
Lou Burridge
Robert Roper
Ray Frost
Robert Roper
George Burridge
At David Kira Ltd, Banana Merchants
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To anyone that knows Spitalfields, David Kira Ltd is a familiar landmark at 1 Fournier St next to The Ten Bells. Here, at the premises of the market’s foremost banana merchant – even though the business left more than a quarter of a century ago – the name of David Kira is still in place upon the fascia to commemorate the family endeavour which operated on this site for over half a century.
By a fluke of history, the business that trades here now has retained the interior with minimum intervention, which meant that when David’s son Stuart Kira returned for the first time since he left in 1991, his former office, where he worked for almost thirty years – and even his old chair – was still there, existing today as part of a hairdressing salon.
This is a story of bananas and it began with Sam Kira in Southend, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who became naturalized in 1929 and started a company called “El Dorado Bananas.” Ten years later, his son opened up in Fournier St as a wholesaler, taking a lease from Lady Fox but having to leave the business almost at once when the war came, bringing conscription and wiping out the banana trade. Yet after the war, he built up the name of David Kira, creating a reputation that is still remembered fondly in Spitalfields and, since the shop remains, it feels as if the banana merchants only just left.
“When I first came to the market as a child of seven, we lived in Stoke Newington and took the 647 trolley bus to Bishopsgate and walked down Brushfield St. Every opportunity, I came down to enjoy the action and the atmosphere, and the biggest thrill was getting up early in the morning – I always remember being sent round to the Market Cafe to get mugs of tea for all the staff. When I joined my father David in 1962, aged sixteen, my grandfather Sam had died many years earlier. There was me and my father, John Neil (who had been with my father his entire working life), Ted Witt our cashier, two porters, Alf Lee and Billy Alloway (known as Billy the thief) and we had an empty boy. Our customers were High St greengrocers and market fruit traders, and we prided ourselves on only selling the best quality produce. Perhaps this was why we had a lot of customers. It was hard work and long working hours, getting up at half past four every morning to be at the market by five thirty. I used to sleep for a couple of hours in the afternoon when I got home, until about six, then I’d get up and return to bed at eleven until four thirty – I did that six days a week.
We received our shipments direct from Jamaica through the London Docks – bananas in their green state on long stalks – they arrived packed in straw on a lorry and it was very important that they be unloaded as soon as they arrived, whatever time of day or night the ship docked, because the enemy of the banana is the cold. They were passed by hand through a hatch in the floor to the ripening rooms downstairs – it took five days from arrival until they were saleable. Since the bananas came from the tropics, it was not so much the heat you had to recreate as the humidity. We had a single gas flame in the corner of each ripening room, the green bananas hung close together on hooks from the ceiling and, when the flame was turned down, a little ethylene gas was released before the door was sealed. Once they were ripened, they had to be boxed. You stood with a stalk of bananas held between your legs and struck off each bunch with a knife, placing it in a special box, three foot by one foot – a twenty-eight pound banana box.
During the sixties, dates were only sold at Christmas but in the seventies when the Bangladeshi people arrived, we started getting requests for dates during Ramadan. I contacted one of the dates suppliers and I asked him to send me thirty cases, and they were sold to Bengali greengrocers in Brick Lane before they even touched the floor. Subsequently, we sold as many dates as we could get hold of, more even than at Christmas. During this period, we also saw the decline of the High St greengrocers due to the supermarkets, however we found we were able to compensate for the loss of trade by fulfilling the requirements of the Asian community.
Eventually, they started importing pre-boxed bananas in the eighties, so our working practices changed and the banana ripening rooms became obsolete. My late father would be turning in his grave if he knew that bananas are now placed in cold storage, which means they will quickly turn black once they get home.
In 1991, when the market moved, we were offered a place in the new market hall but trading hours became a free-for-all and, although we started opening at three am, we were among the last to open. By then I was married and had children, and without the help of my father and John Neil who had both retired, I found it very difficult to cope. It was detrimental to my health – so, after a year, I sold the company as a going concern. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but by chance I bumped into a colleague who worked in insurance and he introduced me to his manager. I realised in that type of business I could continue to be self-employed, so I trained and qualified and I have done that for the past twenty years. When I think back to the market, I only got two weeks a year holiday and I felt guilty even to put that pressure on my father and John Neil when I was away.”
Proud of his father’s achievement as a banana merchant, Stuart delighted to tell me of Ethel, the rat-catching cat – named after the ethylene gas – who loved to sleep in the warmth of the banana ripening rooms and of Billy Alloway’s tip of sixpence that he nailed to the wall in derision, which stayed there as his memorial even after he died. Stuart cherishes his memory of his time in the market, recognising it as a world with a culture of its own as much as it was a place of commerce. Today, the banana trade has gone from Spitalfields where once it was a way of life, now only the name of David Kira – heroic banana merchant – survives to remind us.
Sam Kira (far right) dealing in bananas in London and Southend.
Sam Kira’s naturalization papers.
David Kira at the Spitalfields Fruit Exchange – he is centre right in the fifth row, wearing glasses and speaking with his colleague.
The banana trade ceased during World War II.
David Kira as a young banana merchant.
David Kira (left) with his son Stuart and business partner John Neil.
David Kira and staff.
Stuart Kira stands in the doorway of his former office of twenty years, where his father and grandfather traded for over fifty years.
David Kira Ltd, 1991
First and last pictures copyright © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
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East End Desire Paths
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In Weavers’ Fields
Who can resist the appeal of the path worn solely by footsteps? I was never convinced by John Bunyan’s pilgrim who believed salvation lay in sticking exclusively to the straight path – detours and byways always held greater attraction for me. My experience of life has been that there is more to be discovered by stepping from the tarmac and meandering off down the dusty track, and so I delight in the possibility of liberation offered by these paths which appear year after year, in complete disregard to those official routes laid out by the parks department.
It is commonly believed that the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard invented the notion of “desire paths” (lignes de désir) to describe these pathways eroded by footfall in his book “The Poetics of Space,” in 1958, although, just like the mysterious provenance of these paths themselves, this origin is questioned by others. What is certain is that the green spaces of the East End are scored with them at this time of year. Sometimes, it is because people would rather cut a corner than walk around a right angle, at other times it is because walkers lack patience with elegantly contrived curved paths when they would prefer to walk in a straight line and occasionally it is because there is simply no other path leading where they want to go.
Resisting any suggestion that these paths are by their nature subversive to authority or indicative of moral decline, I prefer to appreciate them as evidence of human accommodation, coming into existence where the given paths fail and the multitude of walkers reveal the footpath which best takes them where they need to go. Yet landscape architects and the parks department refuse to be cowed by the collective authority of those who vote with their feet and, from time to time, little fences appear in a vain attempt to redirect pedestrians back on the straight and narrow.
I find a beauty in these desire paths which are expressions of collective will and serve as indicators of the memory of repeated human actions inscribed upon the landscape. They recur like an annual ritual, reiterated over and over like a popular rhyme, and asserting ownership of the space by those who walk across it every day. It would be an indication of the loss of independent thought if desire paths were no longer created and everyone chose to conform to the allotted pathways instead.
You only have to look at a map of the East End to see that former desire paths have been incorporated into the modern road network. The curved line of Broadway Market joins up with Columbia Rd cutting a swathe through the grid of streets, along an ancient drover’s track herding the cattle from London Fields down towards Smithfield Market, and the aptly named Fieldgate St indicates the beginning of what was once a footpath over the fields down to St Dunstan’s when it was the parish church for the whole of Tower Hamlets.
Each desire path tells a story, whether of those who cut a corner hurrying for the tube through Museum Gardens or of joggers who run alongside the tarmac path in London Fields or of the strange compromise enacted in Whitechapel Waste where an attempt has been made to incorporate desire paths into the landscape design. I am told that in Denmark landscape architects and planners go out after newly-fallen snow to trace the routes of pedestrians as an indicator of where the paths should be. Yet I do not believe that desire paths are a problem which can be solved because desire paths are not a problem, they are a heartening reminder of the irreducible nature of the human spirit that can never be contained and will always be wandering.
The parting of the ways in Museum Gardens.
The allure of the path through the trees.
In Bethnal Green, hungry for literature, residents cut across the rose bed to get to the library.
A cheeky little short cut.
An inviting avenue of plane trees in Weavers’ Fields.
A detour in Florida St.
A byway in Bethnal Green.
Legitimised by mowing in Allen Gardens, Spitalfields.
A pointless intervention in Shadwell.
Which path would you choose?
Over the hills and faraway in Stepney.
The triumph of common sense in Stepney Green.
Half-hearted appropriation by landscape architects on Whitechapel Waste.
A mystery in London Fields.
A dog-eared corner in Stepney.
The beginning of something in Bethnal Green.
