Spitalfields Life

Hugh Wedderburn works every day carving wood in the window of an old shop in the Borough at the meeting point of two Roman roads, Stane St and Watling St. “The ancient approach to London,” Hugh delights to call it, aware that the nature of the work he does has not changed significantly in all the time these roads have been there. Fifty yards behind Hugh’s workshop, a fourth century Roman tablet was found that includes the usage of the name “London.” It gives Huw pleasure to contemplate these things, savouring his position at the centre of this age-old neighbourhood.

While the world races by Hugh’s window, and as the acorns in pots on his bench grow up to become trees, he patiently shaves away superfluous pieces of wood to reveal elegant forms of creatures and foliage, that were just waiting to be uncovered by his keen tools. Or rather, that is the way it seems, because the quality of Hugh’s carving has such natural veracity and grace that it belies the immense skill and laborious application it takes to bring it into existence.

“The chisel makes the shape,” said Hugh, as if his involvement as woodcarver were merely incidental. “So you have to have the right chisel to make the form, and you need to have them in various bent shapes to do the awkward bits,” he added, referring to a handsome array of fifty diverse old chisels laid out in a crescent upon his bench surrounding the current piece of work, all perfectly-sharpened and interlaced with shavings. With these, Hugh can create the extraordinary intricate relief carving of baroque swags, flourishes and foliage that stands proud of the surface and defies the imagination to comprehend how mere mortals could carve it.

“I felt like I was coming home when I moved here to the Borough in 1996,” confessed Hugh brightly, peering out the window at the passersby in Tabard St, “because I was born in Nigeria and there are quite a lot people in Southwark from Nigeria.” In 2001, Hugh was contacted by Margaret Wedderburn Evans who told him they had a common ancestor in Robert Wedderburn, born in the West Indies in 1762 to a Scots’ father and a Jamaican mother. A campaigner against slavery, he came to London and joined the Spencerians, an English radical group that united the working men’s cause.

Today, Hugh’s ancestor is remembered for slogans such as,”It’s demeaning for the oppressed to petition the oppressor,” and “You can take away my weapons but I can still spit.” Sentiments that Huw quotes with relish and a gleeful smile. “I am the answer to the question of what happened to the first Afro-Caribbeans that came to London,” he said, holding up a lithe forearm to display his pale flesh. “Look, that’s what happened to them,” Hugh declared enigmatically, indicating that his perception of the world has a depth and complexity comparable to his work.

Hugh is at the top of his profession, yet in spite of his superlative skill the rewards are ultimately those of esteem rather than wealth. “It would be lovely to earn a fortune, but I get the satisfaction,” he admitted quietly, with a self-possessed grin, turning to the window again, “And I’m here in the middle of London. Office workers pass by on the way to their jobs and tell me how contented I look.”

When Hugh moved into his current workshop it had been a betting shop, but when he pulled out the shopfittings he found old matchboarding, now covered with organised lines of tools that form the background to his crowded yet harmonious work space. Sunlight pours in through the shop window, and filtered through the saplings in pots on Hugh’s work bench, it casts a soft light upon all the bits and pieces of work in progress, souvenirs of past works, cases of books and catalogues, working drawings, sculptures, driftwood and twigs.

“I wanted to be a sculptor but I didn’t want to go to art school,” explained Hugh, casting his eyes upon all the objects disappearing into shade at the rear of the shop. “So I found the City & Guilds School that teaches restoration” he continued, leading me purposefully to a table in a shadowy corner of the workshop, “and after that I became an antiques restorer. Then I made this table in the Queen Anne style and put it in an exhibition. It was shown in a magazine and that brought in a few private clients. And I realised how much more pleasure it was working for them than the antiques trade in general. The most interesting work is when an interior designer commissions a piece and gives you the freedom to be creative.”

I was fascinated to examine Hugh’s first table and see the marks of the chisel still fresh upon this bravura work. Without the varnish, staining and gilding that you expect of old furniture, it had another quality, and the clarity of the expressive wood carving came into relief. “There’s a snobbery about whether you’re an artist or not, as a woodcarver, because it’s a collaborative art,” mused Hugh, while I squatted down to admire the details of his extraordinary table, “but a musician interprets a composer’s work and that’s collaborative, yet it is not seen to compromise their integrity as a fine artist.” It was an interesting question, but not one to trouble Hugh very long because it was time to return to the bench and his current work.

Hugh started carving, making deliberate, slow confident strokes with a sharp chisel in absolute physical concentration, and a transformation came upon him. The man who had been so upbeat in conversation – flashing his startling grey eyes – was gone, and different, quieter, energy filled him. The clamour of the city retreated, the sound of Hugh Wedderburn’s wood carving was the only sound, and peace reigned.

This was Hugh’s first table.

Hugh’s current work-in-progress, these acorns are a detail from a larger composition.

A mirror carved by Hugh Wedderburn to a design by Marianna Kennedy

The title panel for the Cadfael television series, carved by Hugh in oak.

Work in progress upon a mirror frame by Marianna Kennedy sits upon the bench in Hugh’s workshop.

This is the earliest known photo of the remarkable Mavis Bullwinkle, seen here attending a Christmas party in 1932 at the Drill Hall in Buxton St, hosted by Rev Holdstock of All Saints’ Church, Spitalfields – Mavis can easily be distinguished to the left of the happy crowd, because she is a baby in her mother Gwendoline’s arms. In this picture, you see her at the centre of life in Spitalfields and even though this hall does not exist anymore and the church it was attached to was demolished in 1951, and everyone else in this photo has gone now too, I am happy to report that Mavis is still alive and kicking, to carry the story of this world and continue her existence at the centre of things in the neighbourhood.

Mavis’ grandfather, Richard Pugh, was a lay preacher who came to Spitalfields with his wife and family from North Wales in 1898, where he held bible classes at All Saints and spoke at open air meetings and, in the absence of social workers, counselled men from the Truman Brewery in their family problems. His mother paid for him to return alone to Wales to see her for two weeks annual holiday from the East End each year. But Mavis’ grandmother Frances never had a holiday, she said, “Why should people take notice of you when you talk of living the Christian life, when you have an easier time than they do?” Then in 1905, Richard died unexpectedly of pneumonia and Frances was left almost bereft in Spitalfields. She had to leave the church house and take care of her seven children alone. She received a modest pension from the Scripture Readers’ Union until her youngest son, Albert, was fourteen, the Truman Brewery gave her a small grant twice a year and she took work scrubbing floors.

The family moved into Albert Family Dwellings, a large nineteenth century block in Deal St, where subsequently Mavis grew up, living there until it was demolished in 1975 when they were rehoused in a new block in Hanbury St. And today, when I visited Mavis in Hanbury St less than a hundred yards away from the site of Albert Family Dwellings and she described her grandmother who died when she was six, an extraordinary perspective became apparent, connecting our world with that of  Spitalfields more than a century ago.“I remember her shape and her North Wales accent, a lilt.” Mavis told me, conjuring the image in her mind’s eye,” She would always call my father Alfred, when everyone else called him Alf. She was short of stature and she worked hard.”

Mavis’ testimony of life in the East End is one of proud working class families who strove to lead decent lives in spite of limited circumstances. “People like to think that they were all drunks who dropped their ‘h’s, and they were dirty,” she said, eager to dispel this misconception, “Years ago, people were poor but they were completely clean. You can wash without a bathroom, but it takes a lot of work. My father used to put the water on to boil and pour it into the bath. And in the Family Dwellings, it was very well maintained, low rents, strict rules and a uniformed superintendent. When my mother was small and people had large families, if the superintendent saw children playing after eight o’ clock, he’d say ‘Go to bed!’ and you had to do it. I often think of it now when I see children playing outside at eleven at night. Then, everyone used to know each other and help one another. If you were going away on holiday, you’d tell everyone and they’d wave you goodbye.”

Mavis’ story of her family’s existence in Albert Family Dwellings spans the original flat where her grandmother lived with her two maiden aunts, and then Mavis’ parents’ flat that she grew up in. Mavis took care of her mother and the two aunts, who lived to be eighty-six,ninety and ninety-five respectively, even after they all moved out – seventy years after they first moved in as an act of expediency. But by then the nature of the place had changed and it was condemned as part of a slum clearance programme. “It suddenly went down hill in the late fifties when the housing association sold it,” admitted Mavis with a regreftul smile, looking from her living room window across the rooftops of Spitalfields to the space where Albert Family Dwellings formerly stood, a space that holds so much of her family history. If Mavis had married, she would have left Spitalfields but instead she stayed to care for the elderly members of her family and worked for forty years as a secretary in the social work department at the Royal London Hospital, where she was born in 1932. A woman of dauntless temperament, even retired now, she returns one day a week on a voluntary basis to do typing for the friends of the hospital and on another day each week she does reading with a reception class at Christ Church School in Brick Lane where she is a governor.

In Mavis’ personal landscape, Spitalfields’ neighbouring territory, the City of London holds an enduring fascination as a symbolic counterpoint to these streets where she makes her home. “I love the City because I went to school in the City at the Sir John Cass School,” she confided with pleasure, “and my father worked as a clerk in the City, at the Royal London Oil Company for fifty-one years. To go from Tower Hamlets to the City, crossing Middlesex St, was like crossing the River Jordan to the Promised Land. Everyone in Stepney used to dream of living in the City. Before the war, all kinds of people lived in the City, caretakers and such, not just rich people like now.” And then Mavis ran into another room to bring a framed certificate to show me and held it up with a gleaming playful smile of triumph. It read, “Mavis Gwendoline Bullwinkle, Citizen of the City of London.”

Mavis Gwendoline Bullwinkle – Citizen of Spitalfields – is a woman who makes no apology to call herself a secretary, because she is inspired by the best of that proud nineteenth century spirit which carried a compassionate egalitarian sense of moral purpose.

Mavis’ mother’s family, the Pughs of North Wales, photographed in Spitalfields in 1900. At the centre, Mavis’ grandmother Frances holds Mavis’ mother Gwendoline as a baby, with her grandfather Richard at her shoulder, a lay preacher who died unexpectedly of pneumonia four years later.

Handbill for one of Mavis’ grandfather’s bible classes at St Matthew’s Mission, Fulham.

Mavis’ mother Gwendoline and her sisters at All Saints School, Buxton St, Spitalfields, 1904. g – Gwendoline, l – Laura, a – Ada and h – Hilda.

Mavis’ father’s family, the Bullwinkles of Bow in 1917. Her grandmother Lousia sits on the left and her grandfather Edwin on the right. Mavis’ father Alfred stands between his two brothers Harry and Ted, both in Royal Air Corps uniform. The eldest daughter standing behind her mother was also Louisa but known as “Sis.”

Mavis, with her parents Gwendoline and Alfred, and younger sister Margaret in Barking Park, 1939 – before Mavis & Margaret were evacuated to Aylesbury.

Mavis stands on the extreme left of this picture of the All Saints Church Spitalfields choir, 1951.

Mavis sits at the centre of the picnic at this Christ Church, Spitalfields, Sunday School outing to Chalkwell in the late fifties – presided over by Mrs Berdoe (top centre).

Mavis Bullwinkle in her Hanbury St flat