Boiling The Eels At Barneys Seafood
On most mornings throughout the year, just a stone’s throw from the Tower of London, you will find them boiling the eels at Barney’s Seafood, under an old railway arch in Chambers St. For the past twenty-eight years Mark Button has presided there over the business that his father Eddie Button took over in 1970 from Barnet Gritzman (brother of Solomon Gritzman, the owner of Tubby Isaac’s), who was boiling eels here since before World War II. Thus you will know that this is an established location for the pursuit of one of the East End’s most traditional culinary tasks, the preparation of jellied eels.
I joined Stuart – a blocksman of twenty-two years’ experience – with a firm jaw and resolute eyes, at the rear of the arch in a room awash in pools of water, where he brandishes a fearsome curved blade with striking accomplishment, making short work of gutting and chopping great gleaming piles of eels. Arriving fresh from the tanks in Canning Town, Stuart tipped the morning’s eels out onto the bench where at first they slithered and slid in a shining mass. Then, gripping each one firmly by the head, Stuart decapitated it in the manner of those traitors of old across the road at Tower Hill, before slicing it open with a flick of the knife and disposing of both the head and the gut into the bin. It is a neat series of honed gestures that require both skill and years of practice, and you can be assured, Stuart has got the knack.
Interspersed with constant sharpening, since the eels’ back bone quickly blunts the long blade, Stuart likes to keep his knife razor sharp. “I’d rather cut my finger with a sharp blade than a blunt one!” he joked with enthusiastic grim humour as another eel’s head plopped into the bin. Yet make no mistake, Stuart has the greatest respect for eels. “Eels are very mysterious,” he said, turning philosophical and standing in absent-minded contemplation, with an eel and a blade in each hand, “There’s not a lot people know about eels. It’s funny how they know how to go to the Sargasso Sea, they’ve got a homing instinct.”
Once Stuart had chopped them up neatly, Paul the personable cook of ten years experience cooking eels, came from next door to collect the baskets of sliced fish and carry them through to the pots for boiling. Four tall steel cooking pots stood in a line on gas rings, each with filled with salt water and a bundle of parsley, some with eels already cooking and others just bubbling up to the boil, creating a wonderfully pungent sweet salty warm atmosphere. Paul tipped the eels straight into the hot water to cook, a process that can take between forty-five minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the type of eel, and he turned to lay out the bowls in neat lines upon shelves on the other side of the room, all ready for the eels when they are cooked. “Today we’ve got fresh Dutch eels and some frozen Chinese eels,” he explained helpfully, “Yesterday we had New Zealand eels and in a couple of weeks we’ll have the native Irish eels – they are best, seasonal, grown in the wild, nice texture and nice to eat.” Adding politely, “Have you ever thought of working in the fish industry?” he enquired – eager to make me feel included in such an enthralling process and flattering me with the question.
“You need to get them just before they’re cooked, when they’re as soft as possible” he continued, “because they harden afterwards,” – educating me, as he lifted a spoonful from the water and tasted one critically, before switching off the flames below and performing the delicate manoeuvre of sliding the pot off the cooking ring and onto a trolley. Catching me unawares so early in the morning, “Would you like to try one?” he asked – sensing my fascination – and naturally I assented. He passed me the morsel of pale eel flesh and I put it in my mouth. It was sweet and warm and it crumbled when I sank my teeth into it, releasing a delicate salty tangy flavour. In that instant, I wanted a plate of hot mashed potato to go with it, and I wanted more eels too. Paul did not know it was my first time, yet although I will have to wait until my next visit to a pie and mash shop to eat a plate of hot eels, I was converted.
Then Paul set about methodically distributing the eels equally into bowls, letting them cool and set in the jelly that is their natural preservative. And by then it was time for him to collect more baskets of sliced eels from Stuart and tip them into the cooking pot. Meanwhile, a stream of customers were pulling up outside and coming in excitedly to shake hands with Mark Button and carry away their bowls of fresh jellied eels for the weekend, as a tasty treat to restore their spirits. No other food excites such passion in the East End as the eel, and that is why East Enders delight to make the pilgrimage to Barney’s – they come to claim the dish that is their right.
“Eels are very mysterious, there’s not a lot people know about them”
Stuart, a blocksman of twenty-two years experience who learnt the trade from Eddie Button.
Eels simmering with parsley in cooking pots of salt water.
Paul the cook – “Have you ever thought of working in the fish industry?”
Mark Button, proprietor of Barney’s Seafoods
You may also like to read about
Fat Cats In The City, 1824
Fat cats in the City of London are nothing new as these elegant cartoons of Regency bankers from 1824 by Richard Dighton in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute testify
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
At God’s Convenience
“Slovenliness is no part of Religion. Cleanliness is indeed close to Godliness” – John Wesley, 1791
Oftentimes, walking between Spitalfields and Covent Garden, I pass through Bunhill Fields where – in passing – I can pay my respects to William Blake, Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan who are buried there, and sometimes I also stop off at John Wesley’s Chapel’s in the City Rd to pay a visit to the underground shrine of Thomas Crapper – the champion of the flushing toilet and inventor of the ballcock.
It seems wholly appropriate that here, at the mother church of the Methodist movement, is preserved one of London’s finest historic toilets, still in a perfect working order today. Although installed in 1899, over a century after John Wesley’s death, I like to think that if he returned today Wesley would be proud to see such immaculate facilities provided to worshippers at his chapel – thereby catering to their mortal as well as their spiritual needs. The irony is that even those, such as myself, who come here primarily to fulfil a physical function cannot fail to be touched by the stillness of this peaceful refuge from the clamour of the City Rd.
There is a sepulchral light that glimmers as you descend beneath the chapel to enter the gleaming sanctum where, on the right hand side of the aisle, eight cedar cubicles present themselves, facing eight urinals to the left, with eight marble washbasins behind a screen at the far end. A harmonious arrangement that reminds us of the Christian symbolism of the number eight as the number of redemption – represented by baptism – which is why baptismal fonts are octagonal. Appropriately, eight was also the number of humans rescued from the deluge upon Noah’s Ark.
Never have I seen a more beautifully kept toilet than this, every wooden surface has been waxed, the marble and mosaics shine, and each cubicle has a generous supply of rolls of soft white paper. It is both a flawless illustration of the rigours of the Methodist temperament and an image of what a toilet might be like in heaven. The devout atmosphere of George Dance’s chapel built for John Wesley in 1778, and improved in 1891 for the centenary of Wesley’s death – when the original pillars made of ships’ masts were replaced with marble from each country in the world where Methodists preached the gospel – pervades, encouraging solemn thoughts, even down here in the toilet. And the extravagant display of exotic marble, some of it bearing an uncanny resemblance to dog meat, complements the marble pillars in the chapel above.
Sitting in a cubicle, you may contemplate your mortality and, when the moment comes, a text on the ceramic pull invites you to “Pull & Let Go.” It is a parable in itself – you put your trust in the Lord and your sins are flushed away in a tumultuous rush of water that recalls Moses parting the Red Sea. Then you may wash your hands in the marble basin and ascend to the chapel to join the congregation of the worthy.
Yet before you leave and enter Methodist paradise, a moment of silent remembrance for the genius of Thomas Crapper is appropriate. Contrary to schoolboy myth, he did not give his name to the colloquial term for bowel movements, which, as any etymologist will tell you, is at least of Anglo-Saxon origin. Should you lift the toilet seat, you will discover “The Venerable” is revealed upon the rim, as the particular model of the chinaware, and it is an epithet that we may also apply to Thomas Crapper. Although born to humble origins in 1836 as the son of a sailor, Crapper rose to greatness as the evangelist of the flushing toilet, earning the first royal warrant for sanitary-ware from Prince Edward in the eighteen eighties and creating a business empire that lasted until 1963.
Should your attention be entirely absorbed by this matchless parade of eight Crapper’s Valveless Waste Preventers, do not neglect to admire the sparkling procession of urinals opposite by George Jennings (1810-1882) – celebrated as the inventor of the public toilet. 827,280 visitors paid a penny for the novelty of using his Monkey Closets in the retiring rooms at the Great Exhibition of 1851, giving rise to the popular euphemism, “spend a penny,” still in use today in overly polite circles.
Once composure and physical comfort are restored, you may wish to visit the chapel to say a prayer of thanks or, as I like to do, visit John Wesley’s house seeking inspiration in the life of the great preacher. Wesley preached a doctrine of love to those who might not enter a church, and campaigned for prison reform and the abolition of slavery, giving more than forty thousand sermons in his lifetime, often several a day and many in the open air – travelling between them on horseback. In his modest house, where he once ate at the same table as his servants, you can see the tiny travelling lamp that he carried with him to avoid falling off his horse (as he did frequently), his nightcap, his shoes, his spectacles, his robe believed to have been made out of a pair of old curtains, the teapot that Josiah Wedgwood designed for him, and the exercising chair that replicated the motion of horse-riding, enabling Wesley to keep his thigh muscles taut when not on the road.
A visit to the memorial garden at the rear of the chapel to examine Wesley’s tomb will reveal that familiar term from the toilet bowl “The Venerable” graven in stone in 1791 to describe John Wesley himself, which prompts the question whether this was where Thomas Crapper got the idea for the name of his contraption, honouring John Wesley in sanitary-ware.
Let us thank the Lord if we are ever caught short on the City Rd because, due to the good works of the venerable Thomas Crapper and the venerable John Wesley, relief and consolation for both body and soul are readily to hand at God’s convenience.
Nineteenth century fixtures by Thomas Crapper, still in perfect working order.
“The Venerable”
Put your trust in the Lord.
Cubicles for private worship.
Stalls for individual prayer.
In memoriam, George Jennings, inventor of the public toilet.
Upon John Wesley’s Tomb.
John Wesley’s Chapel
John Wesley’s exercise chair to simulate the motion of horseriding,
John Wesley excused himself unexpectedly from the table …
New wallpaper in John Wesley’s parlour from an eighteenth century design at Kew Palace.
The view from John Wesley’s window across to Bunhill Fields where, when there were no leaves upon the trees, he could see the white tombstone marking his mother’s grave.
You may also like to take a look at
Ken Sequin’s Badge Collection
From hundreds in his magnificent collection, Ken Sequin kindly selected badges for me with a local connection – and they comprise an unexpected history of the East End.
Button badges were invented in 1896, when Benjamin Whitehead of Whitehead & Hoag in New York filed a patent for a celluloid-covered metal badge, swiftly opening offices in London, Toronto & Sydney as the craze went global.
Adopted first as a means of advertising by tobacco companies, button badges were quickly exploited for political, religious and fund-raising purposes by all kinds of clubs and organisations.
Kingsland Rd Costermongers Association manufactured by E. Simons, late nineteenth century – one of the rarest badges, possibly a unique survivor
Souvenir of Dirty Dick’s in Bishopsgate, twenties or thirties
St John at Hackney Parochial School founded in 1275 is one of the oldest in the country, early twentieth century
Woolwich Arsenal Football Club, 1907
Hackney Band Club, hat badge c1873, one of the most radical Working Men’s Clubs
Boer War, 1900 – one of the very earliest button badges in this country
Reverse of previous badge, note local manufacturer
Royal Eye Hospital, Moorfields – early twentieth century
Lea Bridge Speedway Supporters’ Club – 1928-32
Dartford Pageant, 1932
Possibly the Regal Edmonton, 1934
Bethnal Green Men’s Institute, Gymnastics, Turin St, early twentieth century
Temperance and Salvation Army buttons, early twentieth century
Dockers Trade Union Badge, established 1889
A cache of badges found in an allotment shed in Walthamstow
World War II propaganda badges
Salvage. Dulwich Council
St George’s Sunday School, Weslyan Mission House, in the eighteen-nineties it took over Wilton’s Music Hall
Reverse of previous badge
WWII National Air Raid Precautions Animals Committee, dog’s identity badge
World War II badges for fundraising clubs to build airplanes
WWII Fundraising club to buy a destroyer
First Labour Mayor of Poplar, Will Crooks was elected MP for Woolwich in 1902
Reverse of buttons above
Dulwich & District Defence League, a Home Front battalion established in 1915
The Mildmay Hospital in Shoreditch was named after Francis Bingham Mildmay in 1890
Early twentieth century silver badge rewarding service in hospital ‘meals on wheels’ service
Barnado’s Young Helpers’ Badge with a portrait of the founder, early twentieth century
Tilbury Seamen’s Hospital, ‘For services rendered’ – possibly thirties
John Groom’s Crippleage & Flower Girls Mission, fund-raising rosettes, c 1900
Photographs copyright © Ken Sequin
You might also like to take a look at
John Gillman’s Bus Ticket Collection
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Libby Hall’s Dog Photography Collection
Clive Murphy’s Matchbox Label Collection
At Arthur Beale
Did you ever wonder why there is a ship’s chandler at the top of Neal St where it meets Shaftesbury Avenue in Covent Garden. It is a question that Alasdair Flint proprietor of Arthur Beale gets asked all the time. ‘We were here first, before the West End,’ he explains with discreet pride, ‘and the West End wrapped itself around us.’
At a closer look, you will discover the phrase ‘Established over 400 years’ on the exterior in navy blue signwriting upon an elegant aquamarine ground, as confirmed by a listing in Grace’s Guide c. 1500. Naturally, there have been a few changes of proprietor over the years, from John Buckingham who left the engraved copper plate for his trade card behind in 1791, to his successors Beale & Clove (late Buckingham) taken over by Arthur Beale in 1903, and in turn purchased by Alasdair Flint of Flints Theatrical Chandlers in 2014.
‘Everyone advised me against it,’ Alasdair confessed with the helpless look of one infatuated, ‘The accountant said, ‘Don’t do it’ – but I just couldn’t bear to see it go…’ Then he pulled out an old accounts book and laid it on the table in his second floor office above the shop and showed me the signature of Ernest Shackleton upon an order for Alpine Club Rope, as used by Polar explorers and those heroic early mountaineers attempting the ascent of Everest. In that instant, I too was persuaded. Learning that Arthur Beale once installed the flag pole on Buckingham Palace and started the London Boat Show was just the icing on the cake. Prudently, Alasdair’s first act upon acquiring the business was to acquire a stock of good quality three-and-a-half metre ash barge poles to fend off any property developers who might have their eye on his premises.
For centuries – as the street name changed from St Giles to Broad St to Shaftesbury Avenue – the business was flax dressing, supplying sacks and mattresses, and twine and ropes for every use – including to the theatres that line Shaftesbury Avenue today. It was only in the sixties that the fashion for yachting offered Arthur Beale the opportunity to specialise in nautical hardware.
The patina of ages still prevails here, from the ancient hidden yard at the rear to the stone-flagged basement below, from the staircase encased in nineteenth century lino above, to the boxes of War Emergency brass screws secreted in the attic. Alasdair Flint cherishes it all and so do his customers. ‘We haven’t got to the bottom of the history yet,’ he admitted to me with visible delight.
Arthur Beale’s predecessor John Buckingham’s trade card from 1791
Nineteenth century headed paper (click to enlarge)
Alasdair Flint’s office
Account book with Shackleton’s signature on his order for four sixty-foot lengths of Alpine Club Rope
Drawers full of printing blocks from Arthur Beale and John Buckingham’s use over past centuries
Arthur Beale barometer and display case of Buckingham rope samples
Nineteenth century lino on the stairs
War emergency brass screws still in stock
More Breton shirts and Wellingtons than you ever saw
Rope store in the basement
Work bench with machines for twisting wire rope
Behind the counter
Jason Nolan, Shop Manager
James Dennis, Sales Assistant
Jason & James run the shop
Receipts on the spike
Arthur Beale, 194 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2 8JP
You may also like to read about
Catching Up With Nicholas Borden
Painter Nicholas Borden came along to Doreen Fletcher’s opening on Thursday night to show support to a fellow artist. He invited me to come round next morning and see what he has been up to over the last year. I have been following Nicholas’s work since I met him painting in a blizzard in Vallance Rd in 2013. The paintings below are seen publicly for the first time today and are just a selection of Nicholas’s work from the past twelve months.
The meeting
Hackney Central, Looking Up Mare St
Hackney Central, Looking Down Mare St
London Wall
Valentine Rd
Trying to Cross the Road at the Old Bank, Islington
Victoria Park with Magpie
Trains with Seagull
Cassland Rd, Dusk
Broadway Market
In Bethnal Green
South Library, Essex Rd
Winter Street with Parked Motorcycle
Regent’s Canal, Summer Evening
Snow
Warner Place, Dusk
Waiting for the Bus
The View from my Front Window, Cassland Rd
Meynell Crescent
Winter Snow (work in progress)
Paintings copyright © Nicholas Borden
You may also like to take a look at
Nicholas Borden’s East End View
Nicholas Borden’s Winter Paintings
Nicholas Borden’s Spring Paintings
Tamara Stoll’s Ridley Rd Portraits
Photographer Tamara Stoll has been recording Ridley Rd Market – the people, places and stories – since 2011 and she sent me this fine collection of portraits of traders and shoppers.
Rahmat Gul
Leigh Mayo
“My dad came from a family of fourteen brothers and sisters and they all worked with my nan on the stall. My aunt had a stall across the road and my great-grandmother, she started at the top of the market. They used to walk to Covent Garden Market or Spitalfields with a pram and buy mint and sell it for sixpence a bunch. That’s how we started down here. It has been handed down from generation to generation. Everyone helped each other and everyone got on. It was like a big family down here.
One weekend in 2008, my dad worked on a Saturday and was rushed into the hospital on the Sunday. They made a wreath for him out of fruit, veg and salads. Down this end of the market was completely shut, there wasn’t one stall open. Everyone shut up for my dad. They put a black cloth on his stall and it was full up with flowers. Everyone knew him and he had about a thousand people at his funeral. The procession came through Ridley Rd. If you go up to see Colin on the saucepans, he’ll tell you more.”
Grace, Audrey & Aiden
Angie
Umar & Paul
Barry Lambert
Terry & his family
Liz
Abdul Alizadeh
Angelique
Ali
Brothers
Ch Mushataq Ahmed & Ataa
David Hall
Dionne
Hamid
Hunar
Jason
Kikelomo Awojobi
Mr A James
Phil
Nigest Arava
Robert Evans
“My father Jack Evans started when he came back from the Second World War. He was in the Royal Navy during the Russian convoys. If you went into the water, you only had about to minutes to live but he survived that. That’s why I am here. I started about 1960. In those days, we used to sell a ton of potatoes each day – that’s forty days of potatoes nowadays. Modern day people don’t eat so many potatoes. They eat rice and takeaways, they’ve got choices. In those days you had to bring your own bag. We would have a queue of ten people lining up for potatoes. Cabbage was plentiful during the war, but there was a shortage of potatoes because they take longer to grow. In the war, customers had to buy cabbage to buy the potatoes, you could not just buy potatoes. It was all seasonal then, none of this ‘all year round.’ In the fifties and sixties, we used to sell six vegetables: potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage and cauliflower or leeks, something like that. I was the first one down here to sell broccoli in about 1970.”
Shanti
Trevor
Vitor Perkola
Lucinda Rogers
Photographs copyright © Tamara Stoll
“You’ll find that people have been coming here for years. It’s the local place to go to get your shopping. This is a market in the original meaning of the word. You forget what you’re doing sometimes when you start talking, it’s a community.”
“Before pitches were licensed there used to be a Toby, a market inspector. He would blow a whistle and you would have had to run with your goods to get the best pitch possible. This caused quite a few arguments as you can imagine. There was a lot of trouble,this was before the Second World War, with what you called the blackshirts. They wore a uniform, black trousers and black shirts. They used to be at the corner of Ridley Road market and there used to be lots of fights. They started speaking – Britain was always free speech – and fighting broke out every time.”
“My mum shopped extensively here. The first generation of people that came here, obviously they cooked more authentically than we do. My kids will eat less authentically that I do and that will keep evolving down the line. It’s a place to come just to pick up that odd bit of tradition and have that connection. You buy plantain or yam, go home and cook it and it just gives you that memory of mum and dad and being at home.”
“The road was originally cobblestones for the horses and carts because the cart wheels run better on cobblestones, they don’t run on tar. But the cobbles weren’t laid very level, so you would have puddles here and a curve there and a puddle here. This market is on a bridge, the train runs under here. They changed it in the sixties because the cobbles were too heavy for the bridge, making it subside. So they took the stalls away and we were in Colvestone Crescent for a year while they repaired the bridge and concreted it over – and this is how you see it today. “
“I have been coming to this market for years. A bit of haggling, a bit of bartering, a bit of laughing, you get to know people as well. You build friendships, relationships, that kind of thing. So, it’s totally different to going to a shopping centre.”
“They call it a bread and butter market, and the best thing about it is the amount of variety of fruit and vegetables. Because they do piece selling, it’s very quick. You can load up, do your week’s shopping here in five, ten minutes. You walk down here and walk back up to the street in five minutes, it’s all done.”
“I was nineteen when I worked here in the late seventies. I used to sell wax printed African fabrics here. They have shops in Stamford Hill, here, Petticoat Lane. They still have businesses – Raynes. Cohen is their family name. Actually, they came from Yemen. There was an exodus of people from Yemen in the sixties and seventies and they came here and established a business.”
“This is where you meet the people, in the market, because sinceI started I have met five people already. That’s what the market is all about. People meet and talk, and just get on with it, buy your food and whatever. I just come out for a walk, it keeps me going.”
“If you go to Africa or you go to Jamaica, and you go down the markets, like Kingston Market in Jamaica, or Accra Market in Africa, it’s a lot like this. When you look at all these shops here, this is exactly how it is back home. So it’s like they’ve come here and they have set it up just like they would back home.”
You may also like to take a look at
Lucinda Rogers at Ridley Rd Market
