Spitalfields Life

In common with Pearl Binder, Artist Dorothy Rendell was also fascinated by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and made frequent visits over the years to record the life of this celebrated institution. Significantly, in her drawings Dorothy chose to focus upon the Afro-Caribbean and Asian workers who rarely appear in photographs of the foundry. These pictures are selected from the Dorothy Rendell Archive at Bishopsgate Institute and are published for the first time today.

Meanwhile, Dorothy Rendell’s posthumous solo exhibition runs at Abbott & Holder, 30 Museum St, WC1A 1LH, until 23rd March. I will be speaking about Dorothy at the gallery at noon on Saturday 23rd March.

If you have not yet sent your objection to the proposal to redevelop the Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a bell-themed boutique hotel please do so. You will find instructions for how to do this below. So far, we have lodged over 600 objections versus 3 letters in favour.

Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

You can help save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a living foundry by submitting an objection to the boutique hotel proposal to Tower Hamlets council. Already we have lodged over six hundred letters of objection but we aim to deliver over a thousand. If you have not already done so, please take a moment this weekend to write your letter of objection. The more objections we can lodge the better, so please spread the word to your family and friends.

HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY

Use your own words and add your own personal reasons for opposing the development. Any letters which simply duplicate the same wording will count only as one objection.

1. Quote the application reference: PA/19/00008/A1

2. Give your full name and postal address. You do not need to be a resident of Tower Hamlets or of the United Kingdom to register a comment but unless you give your postal address your objection will be discounted.

3. Be sure to state clearly that you are OBJECTING to Raycliff Capital’s application.

4. Point out the ‘OPTIMUM VIABLE USE’ for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry is as a foundry not a boutique hotel.

5. Emphasise that you want it to continue as a foundry and there is a viable proposal to deliver this.

6. Request the council refuse Raycliff Capital’s application for change of use from foundry to hotel.

WHERE TO SEND YOUR OBJECTION

You can write an email to

planningandbuilding@towerhamlets.gov.uk

or

you can send a letter to

Town Planning, Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, London, E14 2BG

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Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry

So Long, Whitechapel Bell Foundry

Fourteen Short Poems About The Whitechapel Bell Foundry

When I met Dorothy Rendell (1923-2018) in her final months, she admitted to me that it was a matter of great regret that she never had a solo show. Today at 2pm her posthumous solo show opens at Abbott & Holder, 30 Museum St, WC1A 1LH.

I shall be there this afternoon, signing copies of EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who Painted London’s East End Streets in the 20th Century

Paintings will be sold on a strictly first-come first-served basis, so if you have set your heart on one, please arrive well before 2pm. Dorothy bequeathed all the proceeds of her art to Save the Children. The exhibition runs until Saturday 23rd March.

Studio Self Portrait. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated, 1969

Studio Parrot. Oil on canvas. c.1960

Studio/School Room stove. Oil on canvas. c.1955

Orovida Pissarro (1893-1968). Oil on canvas. c.1960

View across Mount Pleasant from Doughty St. Oil on board. c.1960

‘Jerina’, Harry Gosling School Pupil. Oil on canvas. c.1960

Rotherhithe from Wapping Pierhead. Oil on board. c.1955

Rotherhithe from Wapping Pierhead. Oil on board. c.1955

‘View from Strand End’. Oil on canvas. c.1955

Camille Cottage interior (Castle Hedingham) with red chair. Oil on canvas. c.1970

Camille Cottage Interior (Castle Hedingham) with bathroom mirror. Oil on canvas. c.1970

Camille Cottage Interior (Castle Hedingham) with Japanese print. Oil on canvas. c.1970

Camille Cottage interior (Castle Hedingham) with table-top still life

Tuscan Landscape. Oil on canvas. c.1960

Tuscan Landscape. Oil on canvas. c.1960

Italian market. Oil on canvas. c.1960

Tuscan Landscape. Oil on board. c.1960

Self Portrait. c.1960. Oil on canvas

Images copyright © The Estate of Dorothy Rendell

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Wapping Old Stairs

I need to keep reminding myself of the river. Rarely a week goes by without some purpose to go down there but, if no such reason occurs, I often take a walk simply to pay my respects to the Thames. Even as you descend from the Highway into Wapping, you sense a change of atmosphere when you enter the former marshlands that remain susceptible to fog and mist on winter mornings. Yet the river does not declare itself at first, on account of the long wall of old warehouses that line the shore, blocking the view of the water from Wapping High St.

The feeling here is like being offstage in a great theatre and walking in the shadowy wing space while the bright lights and main events take place nearby. Fortunately, there are alleys leading between the tall warehouses which deliver you to the waterfront staircases where you may gaze upon the vast spectacle of the Thames, like an interloper in the backstage peeping round the scenery at the action. There is a compelling magnetism drawing you down these dark passages, without ever knowing precisely what you will find, since the water level rises and falls by seven metres every day – you may equally discover waves lapping at the foot of the stairs or you may descend onto an expansive beach.

These were once Watermen’s Stairs, where passengers might get picked up or dropped off, seeking transport across or along the Thames. Just as taxi drivers of contemporary London learn the Knowledge, Watermen once knew the all the names and order of the hundreds of stairs that lined the banks of the Thames, of which only a handful survive today.

Arriving in Wapping by crossing the bridge in Old Gravel Lane, I come first to the Prospect of Whitby where a narrow passage to the right leads to Pelican Stairs. Centuries ago, the Prospect was known as the Pelican, giving its name to the stairs which have retained their name irrespective of the changing identity of the pub. These worn stone steps connect to a slippery wooden stair leading to wide beach at low tide where you may enjoy impressive views towards the Isle of Dogs.

West of here is New Crane Stairs and then, at the side of Wapping Station, another passage leads you to Wapping Dock Stairs. Further down the High St, opposite the entrance to Brewhouse Lane, is a passageway leading to a fiercely-guarded pier, known as King Henry’s Stairs – though John Roque’s map of 1746 labels this as the notorious Execution Dock Stairs. Continue west and round the side of the river police station, you discover Wapping Police Stairs in a strategic state of disrepair and beyond, in the park, is Wapping New Stairs.

It is a curious pilgrimage, but when you visit each of these stairs you are visiting another time – when these were the main entry and exit points into Wapping. The highlight is undoubtedly Wapping Old Stairs with its magnificently weathered stone staircase abutting the Town of Ramsgate and offering magnificent views to Tower Bridge from the beach. If you are walking further towards the Tower, Aldermans’ Stairs is worth venturing at low tide when a fragment of ancient stone causeway is revealed, permitting passengers to embark and disembark from vessels without wading through Thames mud.

Pelican Stairs

Pelican Stairs at night

View into the Prospect of Whitby from Pelican Stairs

New Crane Stairs

Wapping Dock Stairs

Execution Dock Stairs, now known as King Henry’s Stairs

Entrance to Wapping Police Stairs

Wapping Police Stairs

Metropolitan Police Service Warning: These stairs are unsafe!

Wapping New Stairs with Rotherithe Church in the distance

Light in Wapping High St

Wapping Pier Head

Entrance to Wapping Old Stairs

Wapping Old Stairs

Passageway to Wapping Old Stairs at night

Aldermans’ Stairs, St Katharine’s Way

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The Water Poet in Folgate St will close forever on 29th March as part of British Land’s redevelopment of Norton Folgate into a hideous corporate plaza, granted planning permission by former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in 2016.

Contributing Writer Gillian Tindall first encountered John Taylor the Waterman-Poet (1578 – 1653) when she was researching her book The House by the Thames a dozen years ago. She gives an account of the man behind the legend and the Spitalfields pub that bears his name.

The Water Poet at the edge of Spitalfields and Norton Folgate is a recent berth for John Taylor, although there has been a tavern on the corner where Folgate St meets Blossom St for over two centuries and possibly an ale-house before that. The old name for the muddy pathway that became Folgate St was White Horse Lane, after the brewery situated there since Taylor’s own times. Even longer ago, what became White Horse Lane was formerly the north entrance to the religious house of St Mary Spital.

In the eighteenth century, the street was laid out in stages by a Sir Isaac Tillard, a man of Huguenot descent, who had acquired some of the old Mary Spital land. The earliest evidence of a purpose-built public house appears then and by 1805 it was registered as The Pewter Plate. Those in charge locally have always kept an eye on pubs and publicans, so it is easy to trace the Plate throughout the nineteenth century, the heyday of urban pubs, and into the twentieth. In 1904, when pubs all over the London were being enlarged and made grander, the Plate was rebuilt with the fancy brickwork and the tall, elaborate chimney that you see today.

At some point, probably between the wars, when Spitalfields was becoming ever sootier and more neglected, as its more prosperous citizens took themselves off to greener suburbs, the building was a pub no longer. By the seventies, the erstwhile pub along with two other adjacent properties, became commercial premises owned by`R.Bardigger.’

By and by, the pub was restored to its proper use and the name The Water Poet dates from the current owner’s acquisition in 2003. He undertook the wonderful transformation of the old back yard into a green-leafed garden with fairy lights. It is this area, along with several large rooms created out of a former warehouse, that is to be destroyed as part of British Land’s scheme to redevelop Norton Folgate in the teeth of local opposition. Unfortunately, their hideous corporate plaza with bogus facades received planning permission airily bestowed by the previous and unregretted Mayor of London. John Taylor the water-poet, I believe, would be with us in this struggle.

Those who have enjoyed a drink at The Water Poet in Folgate St may have wondered about this unlikely-sounding figure so far from the water. Yet John Taylor, the seventeenth century Thames ferry-boat man, was a convivial fellow – unless he was waging a vendetta – who was very much at home in pubs. When not on one of his great walks round Britain, he lived most of his life in Bankside, which had many hostelries alongside the theatres and bear-pits. He also had relations who kept inns in Leicester, Abingdon and Norwich whom he sought out in his travels.

Taylor lived through times far more unnerving than ours. Born in Gloucester in the prosperous later days of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, he came up to London to seek his fortune and was apprenticed to an oar-maker, before a spell in the Navy upon dangerous expeditions against Spain in Flores and Cadiz.

Once back in London, he lived through the increasingly turbulent times of the Stuart era, the Civil War and the social oppression of the Cromwellian period. A royalist yet with a liking for Puritan values, he worked as a waterman in the service of the king and was distressed when Charles I lost his head. Taylor was getting on in years by then, complaining bitterly that the Commonwealth had driven the theatres off the south bank and damaged the watermen’s trade, much of which had traditionally consisted of crossings between the City and Southwark. He died in his seventies before Charles II was restored to the throne.

Part subversive journalist, pamphleteer and satirical ballad-maker, part would-be poet and playwright, Taylor longed to join a literary society into which he had not been born. A ferryman by nature, he lived between two worlds socially. As hands-on oarsmen, watermen were tough, rough fellows of their time, competing vociferously for trade, but they met a remarkable range of customers many of whom valued and cultivated them. This was also an era when the Waterman’s Company was being established (with Taylor’s active involvement), fares were being set, intelligent men like him were becoming fully literate and the era of New Learning would soon dawn.

Taylor was a natural self-publicist, a collector of useful friends, but also a genuinely passionate believer in freedom of expression and the rights of the individual in every class. He became an  advocate for the destitute watermen who had lost their trade during the ferocious winter of 1620-21 when the Thames froze over for six weeks. He soon discovered that, in spite of all his efforts, there was not much money to be made from a literary life – a truth that still holds today – and developed ingenious means of raising cash. When in difficulty, he would take off on long journeys round Britain on foot for which, anticipating the modern way, he would get sponsorship from rich acquaintances. As a stunt, he once rowed down the Thames in a boat made of paper and later made a much publicised trip  – in a rather more solid craft – down the Rhine and the Elbe.

A good talker, Taylor cultivated the society of Bankside actors, advocating their cause against the rising tide of Puritanism. I imagine him as the archetypal cab-driver – “Had Will Shakespeare in the back of my boat the other day…  As my good friend Mr Henslowe said to me…” He fought back with some success against the Uber of his time – namely, the wheeled conveyances for hire that were beginning to appear on London’s cobbled streets and alleys as an alternative to the traditional way of travelling by river.

John Aubrey, diarist and man-about-town who was familiar with some of the cleverest men of his era, described John Taylor as `very facetious and diverting company’ and possessing `a good, quick look’. Thomas Decker, the Jacobean playwright, called him `the ferryman of heaven’, but there may have been a touch of irony in that.

Taylor’s poetry has not survived in the public mind, since perhaps it did not really deserve to, but his cheerful and inventive spirit has lived on to this day. He died in an inn in Covent Garden kept by his second wife, and lies buried somewhere behind St Martins in the Fields, where the graveyard of the old church lay, and where present-day travellers and aspirants to fame gather with their backpacks and their own travellers’ tales.

John Taylor the Water Poet

“All sorts of men, work all the means they can,

To make a Thief of every waterman:

And as it were in one consent they join,

To trot by land i’ th’ dirt, and save their coin.

Carroaches, coaches, jades, and Flanders mares,

Do rob us of our shares, our wares, our fares:

Against the ground, we stand and knock our heels,

Whilst all our profit runs away on wheels;

And, whosoever but observes and notes,

The great increase of coaches and of boats,

Shall find their number more than e’er they were,

By half and more, within these thirty years.

Then watermen at sea had service still,

And those that staid at home had work at will:

Then upstart Hell-cart-coaches were to seek,

A man could scarce see twenty in a week;

But now I think a man may daily see,

More than the wherrys on the Thames can be.

When Queen Elizabeth came to the crown,

A coach in England then was scarcely known,

Then ’twas as rare to see one, as to spy

A Tradesman that had never told a lie.”

From An Arrant Thief, 1622

John Taylor’s A Swarm of Sectaries & Schismatiques published 1641

Engraving of John Taylor by Thomas Cockson, 1630

The Water Poet in Folgate St (Photograph by Richard Lansdowne)

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