The Facades Of Spitalfields
In today’s extract from my forthcoming book, I explore the rash of facades that has erupted in Spitalfields.
THE CREEPING PLAGUE OF GHASTLY FACADISM combines a gallery of the most notorious facades and a humorous analysis of facadism – the unfortunate practice of destroying everything apart from the front wall and constructing a new building behind it – revealing why this is happening and what it means.
I still need a few more investors for my book, so if you would like to know more please write to me at spitalfieldslife@gmail.com . You can also support the book by preordering and you will receive a signed copy in October when it is published.
Click here to preorder your copy
Please suggest other London facades I should include.
The facade of Paul Pindar’s House in the Victoria & Albert Museum
Spitalfields is quickly becoming the epicentre of façadism in London. Confronting these examples daily has become such a source of disquiet, it has lead me to consider the nature and meaning of these curious transformations that have taken place before my eyes.
At first in Spitalfields, there was only the facade of the Cock A Hoop public house in Artillery Lane, two nineteenth century front walls punctuated by window openings, standing at angles to each other like a book cover propped open. They stand six feet in front of the new building and their windows do not coincide with the windows behind. Only the steel props which stabilise the facade connect the old and the new.
Although this was a troubling sight, it was the facading of the London Fruit & Wool Exchange in Brushfield St in the heart of Spitalfields that truly shocked me. The destruction of a high quality building from 1927 was forced through by the Mayor of London against the wishes of the local council and offices for small independent businesses replaced by an international legal corporation. This was followed by the destruction of the White Hart in Bishopsgate which traces its origins to 1246 and was replaced with a cylindrical office block rising over the front wall of the ancient tavern. Currently a dignified stable block to the north of Spitalfields in Quaker St, constructed by the Great Eastern Railway in 1888, is being reduced to its exterior wall that will contain a new chain hotel. This building had previously been occupied by local businesses too.
As I write, British Land is demolishing more than eighty per cent of the fabric of their development site in a Conservation Area in Norton Folgate, a former ancient liberty to the west of Spitalfields. Again this was forced through contrary to the wishes of the local council who were overruled by the Mayor of London. More than forty separate premises spread across several streets are being reduced to a handful of large corporate offices with floor plates extending the width of a city block. Only the facades of a few distinctive buildings within this medieval quarter will be preserved as evidence of an urban landscape that developed over centuries. ‘A kind of authenticity’ is the developer’s oxymoronical language to sell this approach. As if there were fifty-seven varieties of authenticity, when ‘authentic’ is not a relative term – something is either authentic or it is phoney.
Now that I am surrounded by façadism on all sides, a certain pattern has become evident. Historically, Spitalfields evolved as a place outside the walls of the City of London where small trades could benefit from the proximity of wealthy customers while paying cheaper rents for workshops. Yet equally the City has been an ambivalent influence. It has been a consistent source of violence in the subjugation of its less powerful neighbour and policies enacted in the City commonly have implications in Spitalfields. When Jewish people were forbade from trading in the City in the twelfth century, they started a market outside the walls which trades to this day as Petticoat Lane Market.
Over the centuries, violence has always had a hand in the creation of the identity of Spitalfields. When Henry VIII ‘dissolved’ the Priory of St Mary Spital which gives its name to the place, he distributed the properties among his friends and turned the gardens and orchards into his artillery ground. When the Great Eastern Railway cut across the north of Spitalfields in the eighteen-thirties, thousands were forced from their homes crowding into nearby streets. It was the same pattern when Commercial St was cut through in the eighteen-fifties – bisecting the parish from north to south – in order to carry traffic from the docks which the City of London wished to divert from its own streets. And again when the railway was extended south across the west side of Spitalfields to Liverpool St, residents were forcibly evicted and their homes demolished.
The construction of Liverpool St Station entailed the destruction of Paul Pindar’s house, a lavish renaissance mansion built in Bishopsgate to house the extravagant collections of Queen Elizabeth’s envoy to Constantinople, Sir Paul Pindar. The headquarters of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings sits nearby in Spital Sq upon the site of the medieval priory and in their archives are letters written in the late nineteenth by architect CR Ashbee pleading with the railway company to save Pindar’s mansion or at least integrate it into their new building. Many of the sentiments and arguments rehearsed in his letters will be familiar to those campaigning to protect historic buildings from destruction today.
In the event, only the frontage of Paul Pindar’s house was saved by the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington where it sits to this day as a poignant relic, the earliest Spitalfields facade – both a reminder of earlier world and a strange precursor of things to come. I can only speculate at the how those in the future will view the museum’s recent acquisition of a fragment of the frontage of Robin Hood Gardens, an idealistic attempt at social housing in East London in the sixties.
The wonder is how, through the centuries, Spitalfields has thrived as a working community in spite of the violence enacted upon it. As if an indomitable spirit of survival arose that found its expression in the resourcefulness of the residents. Yet the generation of such a culture relies upon the provision of cheap workshops and housing.
For the most part, the façadism that has been imposed upon Spitalfields in recent years enables the transformation of buildings which once provided multiple spaces for small local businesses into a handful of large offices for international businesses in the financial industries, and chains. The bizarre and awkward appearance of these structures speaks of this discontinuity, reconciling elements that do not belong together. In short, the facades of Spitalfields are indicative of the corporate takeover of spaces forcibly imposed upon the neighbourhood while maintaining the superficial appearance of a continuum of use.
Yet these new structures are not intended to have longevity. History tells us that Spitalfields is a consistently mutable place where the influence of the greater world always makes itself felt. When Henry VIII’s soldiers ‘dissolved’ the hospital and priory of St Mary Spital, turning out the patients from infirmary and Augustinian brothers from the precinct, it must have seemed like the end of days. But the world always moves on and, a century later, the Truman Brewery opened and the Spitalfields Market was established by royal charter, endeavours whose legacies shape the neighbourhood to this day.
There is no doubt that limited resources will increasingly effect how buildings are constructed. I hope it will demand greater reuse of existing structures and less destruction. London already has examples of buildings that have been facaded more than once. Maybe the facades of Spitalfields will outlive their current forced marriages to find themselves in more sympathetic relationships with buildings yet to be conceived.
We can only dream of this future but we can be certain that this grotesque contemporary practice will not endure.
The former Cock A Hoop tavern in Artillery Lane
The former Fruit & Wool Exchange in Brushfield St
The former White Hart in Bishopsgate
The former Great Eastern Railway stables in Quaker St
British Land are currently demolishing more than 80% of the fabric of their Norton Folgate development site which sits entirely within a Conservation Area
British Land describe the impending facadism in Norton Folgate as ‘a kind of authenticity’
Norman Foster’s proposal for a facaded tower at the corner of Commercial St in a Conservation Area
The exterior cover of the book…
…which opens to reveal the title.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A COPY OF THE CREEPING PLAGUE OF GHASTLY FACADISM
At The Italian Parade In Clerkenwell
Sunday 21st July sees the 134th Italian Parade in Clerkenwell and the weather promises to be much better this year than when photographer Colin O’Brien & I joined the crowds
In spite of the volatile weather, alternating downpours with blazing sunshine, I set out (with my umbrella in hand) to Clerkenwell, where photographer Colin O’Brien invited me to join him at the Italian Parade that he first attended in 1946.
For one Sunday each year, the narrow backstreets are transformed when the descendants of the immigrants who once lived in here in London’s “Little Italy” return to participate in a procession honouring Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and, such is their love for their culture and custom, they were not to be discouraged by a few drops of rain.
Growing up in Victoria Dwellings at the corner of the Clerkenwell Rd and Farringdon Rd, the Italian Parade was an annual fixture in Colin’s childhood and in 1946, at six years old, he marched in the procession as a little blond boy dressed in white – the picture of innocence – to celebrate his confirmation. Later, as a precocious child photographer, some of Colin’s earliest pictures were of the parade and when I first saw these I suggested that he might like to return to Clerkenwell, a lifetime later, to photograph the event again.
There is a certain magic that reigns on these occasions when a Neapolitan atmosphere presides upon these London streets where, for one day of each year, only Italian is spoken, and the recorded mellifluous tones of sentimental songs echo between tall old buildings towering over a full blown Festa taking place in the secret enclave of Warner St, between the major roads of Clerkenwell on either side.
Here, on this special day in July, polenta is cooked in a barrel and served with sizzling sausages and Chianti, old ladies offer homemade cakes, veterans of the Alpine brigade from the nineteen fifties run a coconut shy and old friends meet to enjoy ceaseless embraces, recounting the passing years with sentimental delight.
Walking a little further, you come to Back Hill where the floats assemble and encounter those who will feature in the tableaux, all toshed up in robes thrown together from pairs of old curtains, with unnatural orange makeup applied to their skin and sporting bad wigs and dodgy facial hair, all to give an authentic effect of life in Biblical times. Like a fantasy sequence from some mid-century Italian neo-realist movie, I once saw Jesus step from his car with his crown of thorns already in place. And, as you weave your way through the alleys and byways on this day, it is not uncommon to glimpse angels in tinsel nighties fleeting in the distance.
I joined the hushed crowds outside St Peter’s in the Clerkenwell Rd as three doves were released into the lowering sky. Then, in an explosion of glitter, came the procession of saints, borne aloft and bobbing over the heads of the crowd, each with their attendant retinue of dignified matriarchs from Woking, Aylesbury, Ponders End, Epsom and Hoddesdon – to name only a few of the Italian communities represented.
When the heavens opened and the rain fell upon us, a forest of umbrellas came forth and the saints were swathed in an additional layer of polythene robes, floating ethereally upon the breeze. And, since the commentator reminded us of the afflictions of these medieval holies, like St Rita of Cascia – the patron saint of the impossible – who suffered from a splinter of the cross lodged in her forehead, we were able to draw consolation that a shower of rain was an inconsequential discomfort by comparison. Yet there was an additional poignancy to the tableau of Jesus nailed to the cross, shivering in a loin cloth, as the rain poured down upon him, and to observe the devout concentration of those who maintained their static postures whilst holding trumpets aloft in frozen moments of religious transfiguration, seemingly oblivious of the wet.
With floats and marching bands, and the latest batch of newly-confirmed little children in white, the procession approached its climax, and along came St Michele with one figure raised heavenwards to a sky that was visibly lightening. Then, sure enough, as the figure Our Lady of Mount Carmel appeared, the clouds parted and a ray of sunlight descended upon the church, the catalyst for a spontaneous round of applause from the crowd and even for some, among the credulous, to wipe away a tear.
Once the procession had walked up Rosebery Avenue, down the Farringdon Rd and returned to Ray St, the Italian community had unified for another year in celebration of its common ancestry. It was time for the devout to attend mass, crossing themselves and dipping their fingers in holy water as they entered St Peter’s, London’s oldest Italian church. While for the rest, including Colin (who was a lapsed Catholic) and myself, it was time to savour the temporal delights of the Festa before the rain came down again.
Colin O’Brien marches in the Italian procession in 1946
The procession photographed by Colin O’Brien in the early nineteen fifties from the flat where he grew up at the junction of the Clerkenwell Rd and Farringdon Rd.
Photographs copyright © Estate of Colin O’Brien
More photographs by Colin O’Brien
Colin O’Brien’s Clerkenwell Car Crashes
John Claridge’s Soho Faces
There is a strange atmosphere in Soho these days with the redevelopment of Walker’s Court, the destruction of Foyles and the desecration of Denmark St – which makes it a tonic to enjoy these portraits by Contributing Photographer John Claridge selected from his ongoing series of over six hundred and fifty.
“I started taking portraits of people at The French House in the seventies when I took a picture of Gaston Berlemont. Then, while taking Spike Milligan’s portrait, we got to talking about Soho. At the time, I was living in Frith St, so Ronnie Scott’s and The French were both very familiar to us and, even then, both of us voiced our sadness at changes we saw – lovely delicatessens, independent restaurants and specialists shops closing down, all of which had been there for years.
In 2004, I decided to document the customers at The French in earnest. For me, it was the one place in Soho that still held its Bohemian character, where people truly chose to share time and conversation, and I became aware that many I had once chinked glasses with were no longer around.
These portraits of the regulars are a cross-section of those who sat for me, but there is no rhyme or reason to my selection.”
– John Claridge
Spike Milligan, Comedian & Writer
Molly Parkin, Painter & Novelist
Gaz Mayall, Musician
Lisa Stansfield, Simger & Songwriter
Eddie Gray, Jazz Violinist
Kenny Clayton, Jazz Pianist
Fergus Henderson, Chef & Restauranteur
Georgina Sutcliffe, Actor
John Phillips, Journalist
Norman Balon, Landlord of the Coach & Horses
Millie Laws, Reflexologist
George Baker, Actor
Oliver Bernard, Poet
Clare Shenstone, Artist
Peter Boizot, Founder of Pizza Express
Peter Owen, Publisher
Vanessa Fenton, Dancer at the Royal Ballet & Choreographer
Sebastian Horsley, Artist
Burt Kwouk, Actor
Kevin Petillo, Television Producer
Pinkietessa, Costume maker
James Birch, Art Dealer
Jay Landesman, Nightclub Owner, Writer & Publisher
Anna Lujan Sanchez, Dancer with Ballet Rambert
Freddie Jones, Actor
Paul Lawford, of The Rubbishmen of Soho
Alison Steadman, Actor
Paul Barlow, Cyclist
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
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Signs, Posters, Typography & Graphics
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John Claridge At The French House
Contributing Photographer John Claridge has been a regular at the French since the sixties and below you can read his eulogy to this beloved London institution. Now he has a book launch there and an exhibition of his photomontages in celebration of Lesley Lewis’ thirty years as publican, opening tonight – Wednesday 3rd July at 6pm. All are welcome to join us in raising a glass.
Gaston Berlemont, publican at the French House 1945-89
Lesley Lewis, publican at the French House since 1989
“I first went to Paris in the early sixties, when I was seventeen, working as an assistant to David Montgomery. We were there to shoot pictures for a fashion magazine and, early every morning before the shoot, we would go into a bar or brasserie for a coffee and a croissant. The smell of strong coffee, brandy and Gitanes, posters for art and photographic exhibitions – this was a whole beautiful new world and one that stayed with me.
In the sixties, I also started going to Ronnie Scott’s which was – at that time – in a basement in Gerrard St in Soho. One night on my way to Ronnie’s, I happened to pass the French. The door was open and the smell of coffee, French cigarettes and alcohol engulfed me. I walked in and the rest, as they say, is history.
It still holds that magic for me – a bohemian atmosphere, if you will. Full of artists, actors, poets, directors, media and, dare I say it, photographers. All crazy you understand! All with their own opinions and all very different, as it should be. And as the drink flows, all putting the world to rights, or at least trying to, and certainly with emotion.
I met landlord Gaston Berlemont in the early sixties. He invited me upstairs and introduced me to absinthe – the real stuff. It knocked my bloody head off! We started talking about all the wonderful people who had passed over the threshold, those who have passed away, those who are still around. Later I documented some of these people in my series Soho Faces, which at the moment totals over six hundred and fifty portraits.
It was thirty years ago that Lesley Lewis took over at Gaston’s retirement. After all these years, she ensures the French retains that magic. She not only encouraged me with my project of Soho Faces but also was a fantastic help. I regard her as a very special friend whom I love dearly.
To produce a small show and book that encompasses thirty years is impossible. So I thought I would approach it in an abstract way. Enough, I hope, to capture the smell of coffee, Gitanes, and of course alcohol, and including all the wonderful crazy people, past and present, who all call the French ‘home.’”
Images copyright © John Claridge
Lesley Lewis, The French House
Today, I commence a new occasional series in collaboration with photographer Sarah Ainslie of GREAT LANDLADIES OF LONDON.
I want to celebrate the wonderful women who are responsible for those cherished oases of culture and civility – the pubs which make London a city worth living in. I introduce them in no particular order but I choose to start with Lesley Lewis who has run the French House in Soho for thirty years.
Please send your suggestions of candidates for this series.
‘It is a sort of family, a very strange family’
When you walk into the French House in Dean St, you enter a magical realm of possibility where you discover you are welcome and where you might meet almost anyone. It is the last place I can think of where the spirit of old Soho lingers and where you feel you are at the heart of London. It is a public place and yet people behave as if they were in private, a place where – just by walking in the door – you become accepted into a community.
Since 1891 when it opened, there have only been three publicans at the French House. In 1989, Lesley Lewis took over when Gaston Berlemont passed into legend. Today, Lesley presides with a regal hauteur worthy of Catherine Deneuve, a shrewd humour worthy of Marie Lloyd and a generosity of spirit worthy of Mistress Quickly.
On the road to the French house, Lesley performed with a python in cabaret before graduating to managing a strip club in Old Compton St in 1979, where admission cost 50p and senior customers brought sandwiches to stay all day. As it turned out, these formative experiences proved the ideal qualifications when destiny called.
Lesley tells how Gaston Berlemont’s family took over the pub from the first landlord, a German by the name of Schimdt, whose wife returned – after he had left the country at the outbreak of WWI – to sign over the lease on September 12th, 1914. Gaston spent his whole life at the French House and, on his return from WWII, his father said,”Enough of that. You’re behind the bar, I’m off.”
It was a brawl in the twenties between French sailors smashing pint glasses over each other’s heads that led to the house policy of only serving half pints of beer, which continues to this day with the annual exception of April 1st.
During the last war, the pub – known as the York Minister – became a centre for French ex-patriates in London, serving wine which was a rare commodity then. Gaston’s daughter Giselle recalls Errol Flynn and Orson Welles tasting wine in the cellar at this time, and in June 1940 General De Gaulle wrote his famous speech in the bar -“La France a perdu une bataille. Mais la France n’a pas perdu la guerre!” After the war, the nickname of ‘The French House’ stuck and, in 1984, the name was officially changed.
With such illustrious predecessors, it was a great delight and privilege to sit down with Lesley in a quiet corner of the bar and hear her story in her own words over a glass of Ricard.
“I was General Manager at Peppermint Park, a restaurant and cocktail bar in Upper St Martin’s Lane, and when they sold the company I was offered redundancy or a pub. So I took the pub. It was the George & Dragon in Clerkenwell, a marvellous old pub. I had never poured a pint in my life, but some of my staff came with me because we were all made redundant, and that was the start of loving the pub business.
It took me a while to get into the swing of things and I learnt a good few lessons. We had no idea what we were doing but the customers helped us. After the first week, we were called together by some of the regulars and they said, ‘Lesley, this is fine. We don’t mind you looking after our pub for us.’ That is the truth of pubs, it is not my pub it is the customers’ pub – because without them, we are absolutely nothing.
Slowly, we learnt to pull pints and amuse the customers. We were next door to the school of journalism so we had a lot of students, but most of our customers were the old time, edge-of-the-East-End, Clerkenwell people. They were characters – all been pretty much wiped out, it is something quite different now.
I lived above the George & Dragon and I live upstairs here, it is a very difficult job to do without living on the premises because you are pretty much on for seven days a week. After about five years in Clerkenwell, they offered me a ‘wine bar,’ and this was the wine bar! I knew the French House already and I had always loved it, and I have been here thirty years.
It was always full of wonderful characters – it still is, but they are different kinds of characters today – writers, painters and bohemians. Gaston was the landlord then and it was condemned when he retired in 1989, which I did not discover until I went to get the licence and I was given three months to sort it out. The place had been left to rack and ruin, which I think is probably why Gaston wanted to retire. He was facing a huge bill, instead I got the huge bill but it was worth it.
We had to rebuild it in a way that people would not notice, so we were building through the night. It was the most loved place in the world and I had this feeling I was going to destroy it but the red linoleum on the bar top had to go. It is British oak to go with the rest of the interior and it cost a fortune. Then I had to bash it up a bit so it looked in tune with the whole pub. The windows had not opened since the sixties but we fixed that. There was this awful seating along the window and you burnt your ankles on the heating which was underneath, so we got rid of that and bar stools came in. This pub has evolved.
I have stayed thirty years at the French House because I love it, this is what I do. It is a sort of family, a very strange family. Most of my staff have been with me a very long time and we are very close. Eighty per cent of my customers are regulars and we are all close to each other. We help each other through everything. To be honest, I do not know what I would do without it.
A big city can be a lonely horrible place sometimes and if there is a place where you can go for a bit of comfort and conversation. It is not just about drinking, it is about going to have a chat with somebody, and feel safe in an environment that is yours – where you are not threatened in any way, as you are in a lot of clubs. It is for all ages. Our eldest customer is Norman who is ninety-two but he does not come in very often and our youngest is a year and two months, Georgie’s little boy who has been coming in here since he was conceived.
For me, it all about the people who have been in here over the years – like Francis Bacon, Dylan Thomas, Dan Farson and Lucian Freud. I think at some point just about everybody who is anybody has put a foot over the threshold. They are all still here in a funny kind of way. Their essence is here.
I think it is really important that we keep our pubs. You notice how – particularly in Soho – they are disappearing all the time. It is even more important in the country villages where, if the pub goes, there is nothing. People need to have somewhere to go. It is a very British thing, a pub.”
Portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie
The French House, 49 Dean Street, Soho, London, W1D 5BG
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At Chatham Royal Dockyard
Cliff, HMS Gannett
Behold the ancient mariner I met at Chatham Dockyard. After a long career navigating the seven seas, he now guides visitors around HMS Gannett permanently berthed in a dry dock on the Medway.
Over three hundred years, more than four hundred warships were constructed here and, during the eighteenth century, Chatham became one of this country’s largest industrial sites. Even today – thirty years after it ceased to be a working dockyard – the legacy of this endeavour over such a long period and on such a scale is awe-inspiring.
The vast wooden vault of the covered slipway, dating from 1834, is something akin to a cathedral or an aircraft hangar, and climbing up into the roof is a spatial experience of vertiginous amazement. At the other end of the dockyard, a ropewalk contains a room that is a quarter of a mile long for spinning yarn into cables. Midway between these two, I discovered the Commissioner’s Garden, offering a horticultural oasis in the midst of all this industry with a seventeenth century Mulberry at its heart.
Yet as my feet grew weary, my sense of wonder grew troubled by more complicated thoughts and emotions. The countless thousands that laboured long and hard in this dockyard through the centuries produced the maritime might which permitted Britain to wrestle control of the Atlantic from the French and the Spanish, and build its global empire, delivering incalculable wealth at the expense of the people in its colonial territories.
For better or worse, to see the machinery of this history made manifest at Chatham is an experience of wonder tinged with horror which cannot be easily reconciled, yet it is an inescapable part of this country’s identity that compels our attention if we are to understand our own past.
Horatio Nelson
HMS Gannet (1878)
The covered slipway (1838)
The covered slip was designed by Sir Robert Sebbings, Surveyor to the Navy Board & former Shipwright
HMS Ocelot (1962)
HMS Cavalier (1944)
Threads of yarn are twisted to make twine
Rope continues to be manufactured today in the ropewalk
Machinery from 1811 is still in use
The rope walk dates from 1729
Women were employed from 1864 when mechanisation was introduced
Officers’ houses (1722-33)
The Cashier’s Office where Charles Dickens’ father John Dickens worked as a clerk, 1817-22
Figures and coat of arms from HMS Chatham (1911) on the Admiral’s Offices
Sail & Colour Loft (1734) where the sails for HMS Victory were made
Admiral’s Offices (1808) with George III’s coat of arms
Entrance to the Commissioner’s Garden
Seventeenth century Mulberry tree in the Commissioner’s Garden
Richard Wellesley, brother of the Duke of Wellington, and Royal Dockyard Church (1755)
Main Gate (1720) with arms of George I
Visit CHATHAM HISTORIC DOCKYARD, open every day from February until November
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In The Lavender Fields Of Surrey
I cannot imagine a more relaxing way to enjoy a sunny English summer afternoon than a walk through a field of lavender. Observe the subtle tones of blue, extending like a mist to the horizon and rippling like the surface of the sea as the wind passes over. Inhale the pungent fragrance carried on the breeze. Delight in the orange butterflies dancing over the plants. Spot the pheasants scuttling away and – if you are as lucky as I was – encounter a red fox stalking the game birds through the forest of lavender. What an astonishing colour contrast his glossy russet pelt made as he disappeared into the haze of blue and green plants.
Lavender has been grown on the Surrey Downs for centuries and sold in summer upon the streets of the capital by itinerant traders. The aromatic properties and medicinal applications of lavender have always been appreciated, with each year’s new crop signalling the arrival of summer in London.
The lavender growing tradition in Surrey is kept alive by Mayfield Lavender in Banstead where visitors may stroll through fields of different varieties and then enjoy lavender ice cream or a cream tea with a lavender scone afterwards, before returning home laden with lavender pillows, soap, honey and oil.
Let me confess, I had given up on lavender – it had become the smell most redolent of sanitary cleaning products. But now I have learnt to distinguish between the different varieties and found a preference for a delicately-fragranced English lavender by the name of Folgate, I have rediscovered it again. My entire house is scented with it and the soporific qualities are evident. At the end of that sunny afternoon, when I returned from my excursion to the lavender fields of Surrey, I sat down in my armchair and did not awake again until supper time.
‘Six bunches a penny, sweet lavender!’ is the cry that invites in the street the purchasers of this cheap and pleasant perfume. A considerable quantity of the shrub is sold to the middling-classes of the inhabitants, who are fond of placing lavender among their linen – the scent of which conquers that of the soap used in washing. – William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders, 1804
‘Delight in the orange butterflies dancing over the plants…’
Thomas Rowlandson’s Characteristic Series of the Lower Orders, 1820
‘Six Bunches a-Penny, Sweet Lavender – Six Bunches a-Penny, Sweet Blooming Lavender’ from Luke Clennell’s London Melodies, 1812
‘Spot the pheasants scuttling away…’
From Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Card issued with Grenadier Cigarettes in 1902
WWI veteran selling lavender bags by Julius Mendes Price, 1919
Yardley issued Old English Lavender talcum powder tins from 1913 incorporating Francis Wheatley’s flower seller of 1792
Archive images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
Mayfield Lavender Farm, 1 Carshalton Rd, Banstead SM7 3JA
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