The Bread, Cake & Biscuit Walk
This biscuit was sent home in the mail during World War I
As regular readers will already know, I have a passion for all the good things that come from the bakery. So I decided to take advantage of the fine afternoon yesterday to take a walk through the City of London in search of some historic bakery products to feed my obsession, and thereby extend my appreciation of the poetry and significance of this sometimes undervalued area of human endeavour.
Leaving Spitalfields, I turned left and walked straight down Bishopsgate to the river, passing Pudding Lane where the Fire of London started at the King’s Bakery, reminding me that a bakery was instrumental in the very creation of the City we know today.
My destination was the noble church of St Magnus the Martyr, which boasts London’s stalest loaves of bread. Stored upon high shelves beyond the reach of vermin, beside the West door, these loaves were once placed here each Saturday for the sustenance of the poor and distributed after the service on Sunday morning. Although in the forgiving gloom of the porch it is not immediately apparent, these particular specimens have been there so many years they are now mere emblems of this bygone charitable endeavour. Surpassing any conceivable shelf life, these crusty bloomers are consumed by mould and covered with a thick layer of dust – indigestible in reality, they are metaphors of God’s bounty that would cause any shortsighted, light-fingered passing hobo to gag.
Close by in this appealingly shadowy incense-filled Wren church which was once upon the approach to London Bridge, are the tall black boards tabulating the donors who gave their legacies for bread throughout the centuries, commencing in 1674 with Owen Waller. If you are a connoisseur of the melancholy and the forgotten, this a good place to come on a mid-week afternoon to linger and admire the shrine of St Magnus with his fearsome horned helmet and fully rigged model sailing ship – once you have inspected the bread, of course.
I walked West along the river until I came to St Bride’s Church off Fleet St, as the next destination on my bakery products tour. Another Wren church, this possesses a tiered spire that became the inspiration for the universally familiar wedding cake design in the eighteenth century, after Fleet St baker William Rich created a three-tiered cake based upon the great architect’s design, for his daughter’s marriage. Dedicated today to printers and those who work in the former print trades, this is a church of manifold wonders including the pavement of Roman London in the crypt, an iron anti-resurrectionist coffin of 1820 – and most touching of all, an altar dedicated to journalists killed recently whilst pursuing their work in dangerous places around the globe.
From here, I walked up to St John’s Gate where a biscuit is preserved that was sent home from the trenches in World War I by Henry Charles Barefield. Surrounded by the priceless treasures of the Knights of St John magnificently displayed in the new museum, this old dry biscuit has become an object of universal fascination both for its longevity and its ability to survive the rigours of the mail. Even the Queen wanted to know why the owner had sent his biscuit home in the post, when she came to open the museum. But no-one knows for sure, and this enigma is the source of the power of this surreal biscuit.
Pamela Willis, curator of the collection, speculates it was a comment on the quality of the rations – “Our biscuits are so hard we can send them home in the mail!” Yet while I credit Pamela’s notion, I find the biscuit both humorous and defiant, and I have my own theory of a different nuance. In the midst of the carnage of the Somme, Henry Barefield was lost for words – so he sent a biscuit home in the mail to prove he was still alive and had not lost his sense of humour either.
We do not know if he sent it to his mother or his wife, but I think we can be assured that it was an emotional moment for Mrs Barefield when the biscuit came through her letterbox – to my mind, this an heroic biscuit, a triumphant symbol of the human spirit, that manifests the comfort of modest necessity in the face of the horror of war.
I had a memorable afternoon filled with thoughts of bread, cake and biscuits, and their potential meanings and histories which span all areas of human experience. And unsurprisingly, as I came back through Spitalfields, I found that my walk had left me more than a little hungry. After several hours contemplating baked goods, it was only natural that I should seek out a cake for my tea, and in St John Bread & Wine, to my delight, there was one fresh Eccles Cake left on the plate waiting for me to carry it away.
Loaves of bread at St Magnus the Martyr
Is this London’s stalest loaf?
The spire of Wren’s church of St Bride’s which was the inspiration for the tiered design of the wedding cake first baked by Fleet St baker William Rich in the eighteenth century
The biscuit in the museum in Clerkenwell
The inscrutable Henry Charles Barefield of Tunbridge Wells who sent his biscuit home in the mail during World War I
The freshly baked Eccles Cake that I ate for my tea
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Lyndie Wright, Puppeteer
As a child, I was spellbound by the magic of puppets and it is an enchantment that has never lost its allure, so I was entranced to visit The Little Angel Theatre in Islington. All these years, I knew it was there – sequestered in a hidden square beyond the Green and best approached through a narrow alley overgrown with creepers like a secret cave.
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I were welcomed by Lyndie Wright who co-founded the theatre in 1961 with her husband John in the shell of an abandoned Temperance Chapel. “We bought the theatre for seven hundred and fifty pounds,” she admitted cheerfully, letting us in through the side door,“but we didn’t realise we had bought the workshop and cottage as well.”
More than half a century later, Lyndie still lives in the tiny cottage and we discovered her carving a marionette in the beautiful old workshop. “People travel for hours to get to work, but I just have to walk across the yard,” she exclaimed over her shoulder, absorbed in concentration upon the mysterious process of conjuring a puppet into life. “Carving a marionette is like making a sculpture,” she explained as she worked upon the leg of an indeterminate figure, “each piece has to be a sculpture in its own right and then it all adds up to a bigger sculpture.” In spite of its lack of features, the figure already possessed a presence of its own and as Lyndie turned and fondled it, scrutinising every part like puzzled doctor with a silent patient, there was a curious interaction taking place, as if she were waiting for it to speak.
“I made puppets as a child,” she revealed by way of explanation, when she noticed me observing her fascination. Growing up and going to art school in South Africa, Lyndie applied for a job with John Wright who was already an established puppet master, only to be disappointed that nothing was available. “But then I got a telegram,” she added, “and it was off on an eight month tour including Zimbabwe.”
After the tour, Lyndie came to Britain continue her studies at Central School of Art and John was seeking a location to create a puppet theatre in London. “The chapel had no roof on it and we had to approach the Temperance Society to buy it,” Lyndie recalled, “We did everything ourselves at the beginning, even laying the floorboards and scraping the walls.” Constructed upon a corner of a disused graveyard, they discovered human remains while excavating the chapel to create raked seating as part of the transformation into a theatre with a fly tower and bridge for operating the marionettes. Today, the dignified old frontage stands proudly and the auditorium retains a sense of a sacred space, with attentive children in rows replacing the holy teetotallers of a former age.
“I had intended to return to South Africa, but I had fallen in love with John so there was no going back,” Lyndie confided fondly, “in those days, we sold the tickets, worked the puppets, performed the shows, and then rushed round and made the coffee in the interval – there were just five of us.” At first it was called The Little Angel Marionette Theatre, emphasising the string puppets which were the focus of the repertoire but, as the medium has evolved and performers are now commonly visible to the audience, it became simply The Little Angel Theatre. Yet Lyndie retains a special affection for the marionettes, as the oldest, most-mysterious form of puppetry in which the operators are hidden and a certain magic prevails, lending itself naturally to the telling of stories from mythology and fairytales.
John Wright died in 1991 but the group of five that started with him in Islington in 1961 were collectively responsible for the growth and development in the art of puppetry that has flourished in this country in recent decades, centred upon The Little Angel Theatre. Generations of puppeteers started here and return constantly bringing new ideas, and generations of children who first discovered the wonder of the puppet theatre at The Little Angel come back to share it with their own children.
“The less you show the audience, the more they have to imagine and the more they get out of it,” Lyndie said to me, as we stood together upon the bridge where the puppeteers control the marionettes, high in the fly tower. The theatre was dark and the stage was empty and the flies were hung with scenery ready to descend and the puppets were waiting to spring into life. It was an exciting world of infinite imaginative possibility and I could understand how you might happily spend your life in thrall to it, as Lyndie has done.
Old cue scripts, still up in the flies from productions long ago
Larry, the theatrical cat
Lyndie Wright
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Visit The Little Angel Theatre website for details of current productions
Susannah Dalbiac’s Almanack
Margaret Nairne brought her great-great-great-great-aunt’s diary to show me. It is an Almanack of 1776 belonging to fourteen-year-old Susannah Dalbiac, whose father Charles Dalbiac was a silk & velvet merchant who ran the family business with his brother James at 20 Spital Sq. The Dalbiacs were Huguenots and Susannah’s grandfather escaped France as a youth in a hamper in July 1681 after his parents and three sisters were murdered. At the opening of the diary in January 1776, London was suffering a Great Frost with temperatures as low as minus eighteen degrees. (You can click on any diary page to enlarge it)
Monday JANUARY 1st 1776
Mama & Lucy drank tea at Mrs Martin’s. I stayed at home to make tea for Papa and Cousin James
Tuesday
Papa & Cousin James Dalbiac went to Town before Dinner.
Wednesday
Mama went to Town in the Coach at nine o’clock, took Harriet & Nurse with her. The man came to take down the Organ.
Thursday
We worked at our muffs, drew and did the same as when Mama is at home.
Friday
The man finished packing up the organ. We finished our muffs.
Saturday
I was very glad to see Papa and Mama. They came to dinner. Mama was so good as to make a present of a fan and an Almanack.
Sunday
We did not go to Church. We read a sermon in the morning… The text was Felix’s behaviours towards Paul explained.
Monday JANUARY 15th
Mr Cooke call’d in the morning. They play’d at Quadrille in the evening.
Tuesday
Papa went to town. Mama read Cyrus in the evening.
Wednesday
At Home alone.
Thursday
Mama read Cyrus in the evening.
Friday
Papa came down to dinner. They play’d at Quadrille in the evening.
Saturday
Papa took a ride in the morning to Admiral Geary’s. They play’s at Quadrille in the evening.
Sunday
We read a sermon in the morning, the text was National Mercies considered. I wrote what I understood by it. I kept up a hundred at Battledore Shuttlecock with Miss Watson.
Monday MARCH 11th
Went to Town. Took CM. Din’d at GM’s. Came back to tea. Mama drank tea at Mr Sebly’s. We at home with CM. Papa went to Bookham.
Tuesday
CKL & CM drank tea here. DK slept here.
Wednesday
Papa came to tea. Sally & Frank came to dinner from Bookham.
Thursday
Papa went to Town. We took a ride with Mama & Aunt L to Hackney. Papa came to Dinner.
Friday
Mama took a ride in the Phaeton with Papa.
Saturday
Papa went to Town. Came back to dinner, Papa went to Mr Paris’s. At home with Mama, Lucy and CM.
Sunday
Went to church with CL & we din’d here Papa & Mama drank tea at Uncle Lamotte’s.
(Susannah mistakenly entered her grandmother’s death on the wrong date and crossed it out)
Monday APRIL 1st
Aunt Lamotte went to town with Papa. Came back to tea. They all came in the evening. Grandmama very ill.
Tuesday
Papa went to town. Took CM with him. Came back to tea.
Wednesday
Aunt & Uncle Lamotte went to town with Papa. Aunt and Uncle came back to tea. We spent the day with Mama at Uncle Lamotte’s.
Miss Louise Delaporte
Thursday
Aunt & CL went to town with Papa. Aunt & Uncle came back to tea. We spent the day with Mama at Uncle Lamotte’s.
Grandmama died at four in the evening. Though expected at her age it is always a great loss. She was 84 next July
Friday
Aunt and CL went to Town Came back to dinner with Papa. They spent the evening here. CM came in the morning.
Friday
Papa went to town. Came back to tea. Mama drank tea at Uncle Lamotte’s. CM came here.
Saturday
Went to town with Papa, Uncle and Aunt L & CL who was so good as bespeak some mourning for us, Mama not being well enough. Saw G’mama. Did not find her much alter’d.
Sunday
CL came in the morning. We drank tea at Uncle Lamotte’s. Papa came down in the evening.
Monday APRIL 22nd
Drank tea at Uncle Lamotte’s where we met Uncle Dalbiac’s family
Tuesday
CK call’d. Papa slept in town
Wednesday
Papa came to dinner. Mr Paul and Peter L [..?] spent the day here
Thursday
CM spent the day here. CK called
Friday
Papa went to town. We spent the day at Uncle Lamotte’s
Saturday
CK call’d in the afternoon with MJ Lamotte.
Sunday
Went to church with CK. Sukey din’d here. CM came in the morning.
(Susannah’s own mother had died young and her stepmother gave birth to a baby boy in April.)
Monday APRIL 29th
Mama rather low at little boys going out to nurse. We drank at Uncle. Aunt came here to tea and CL in the evening. Note on opposite page – The little boy went out to nurse upon the Forest the nurse not being able to come.
Tuesday
Papa went to town
Wednesday MAY 1st
Went with nurse Flaxman to see the little boy. Found him very well
Thursday
Staid at home. Aunt Ch CS Dalbiac drank tea here
Friday
Went with nurse Flaxman to see the little boy
Saturday
Papa went to Uncle Lamotte’s in the evening where he met a great many people
Sunday
Went to church with CKL. After church we went with CM to fetch little boy. She spent the day with us.
Monday MAY 13th
Sir John Silvester came to see mama, she was so very low. CK call’d
Tuesday
Sir John Silvester came. Papa went to town came back at night
Wednesday
Papa went to town. Came back for tea.
Thursday
Sir John Silvester came
Friday
Papa went, came to back to tea. Took a ride after tea to see little boy. Found him very well. Call’d on Uncle Lamotte
Saturday
Sir John Silvester came. Ordered mama today a bed till Monday as had a little rash. CM drank tea here.
Sunday
There was no service. Took a ride with Papa & Aunt Lamotte. Called at Uncle Dalbiac.
(Sir John Silvester was a doctor from the French Hospital and one of the top physicians of the day)
(Susannah records her winnings at Quadrille on the right hand page)
Monday JUNE 10th
We drank tea at Mrs Brickendon’s with Mr and Mrs B and C. Walles. Met Mr ? and Mr Forbes
Tuesday
At Home. Play’d at Quadrille in the evening
Wednesday
Mr and Mrs Jourdan came down to dinner. Mrs Fellen and Mrs Draper dined here. Played at Piquet with Mr Barbut.
Thursday
Mrs Brickendon and Miss Streton drank tea here.
Friday
Drank tea at Mrs Brickendon. Lucy played at cards after they came home. Went halfs with her.
Saturday
Drank tea at Mrs Fellen’s. Mr Barbut came down in the Phaeton
Sunday
Went to Church with Miss Barbut. Mrs Rose & Mrs Forbes. Drank tea here.
Monday JUNE 24th
Spent the day at Uncle Lamotte’s. Slept there. Left Wanstead Lane.
Tuesday
In the Morning Papa tooke with the Phaeton to Uncle Dalbiac’s. Took a walk in the evening to see Harriet with Aunt.
Wednesday
At home alone.
Thursday
Spent the day at Sir J Silvester’s with Aunt & Uncle, CL & CM. We had a very agreeable day.
Friday
At home all day
Saturday
We went with Aunt in the morning to see little boy. Found him very well at 1 0’clock Mr Gallie called in the coach. We went with him to Uncle Lamotte’s
Monday JULY 1st
The coach came for us after Dinner to go to Town. Found Mama very well which made me quite happy
Tuesday
Went with mama the other end of Town in the morning. Very busy all day.
Wednesday
We all went down to Uncle Lamotte’s in the evening.
Thursday
Went to Town in the morning. CL & CM with us. We all went to Vauxhall in the evening & I found it much greater than my expectations as I had never see it before. In the morning we saw little Harriet and little boy.
Friday
Very busy all day. Mr Laport din’d with us. He came from New Providence to see Grandmama his sister but was disappointed.
Saturday
We set out a journey…
There is a gap in Susannah Dalbiac’s diary between 6th July and 14th October, after which she is in Paris and from then on many of the entries are written in French. It may be that her stepmother’s illness led the family to return to France where she had relatives or that the turbulence of the Weavers’ Riots in Spitalfields at this time caused James Dalbiac to withdraw his business. Susannah never married or had children but, living with her sister Louisa, she died at her brother-in-law Peter Luard’s house, Blyborough Hall, Lincolnshire in 1842, aged eighty.
Dr Kathy Chater will be showing portraits and discussing the lives of Huguenot Women at 2pm tomorrow, Thursday 25th October at the Guildhall Art Gallery, EC2V 5AE.
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Doreen Fletcher’s First East End Paintings
Over coming months, leading up to the opening of Doreen Fletcher’s retrospective at the Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, on 25th January 2019, we shall be featuring her paintings accompanied by the stories that lie behind them. Today we begin with Doreen’s account of her first visit to the East End in 1983 and the three pictures that this encounter inspired within the first minute.
I shall be giving an illustrated lecture about Artists Who Painted the East End Streets in the 20th Century – including Doreen Fletcher – this Friday 26th October at 4:15pm as part of the East London History Festival at the Whitechapel Idea Store. Click here for tickets
Bus Stop, Mile End
“My first visit to Mile End was for a date in May 1983. Opposite the station, a grandiose thirties building stood in sorrow but a couple of square buildings next to it looked more cheerful in the fading sunlight. They housed Conlon’s Men’s Clothing Shop and Terminus Restaurant, both of which had seen better days. My spirits lifted when I turned the corner into the Burdett Road and a nightclub called Benjy’s caught my attention. Glancing back, I noticed a bus stop next to another squat edifice. Although I did not realise it at the time, I had found subjects for three paintings in the space of a minute.
I was intrigued by the building behind the bus stop which appeared doomed and I wanted to capture it before the bulldozers arrived. In fact, the edifice was flattened barely a year later. I was also intrigued by the two women waiting for a bus and wondered whether they knew each other.
I loved it in the East End because it felt to me as if I were returning home. Like Stoke where I came from, it was predominantly working class and also had once been an important centre for industry. Corner shops and tiny pubs proliferated among street markets.
I noticed the skies first, open and dramatic as they advanced into Essex. There were corrugated fences everywhere, still bombsites where buddleia proliferated and a few prefabs inhabited by artists.
I was excited visually by being somewhere new to me yet that also reminded me of where I grew up. In the Potteries, the town planners’ ethos was ‘If it’s old, let’s sweep it away’ – regardless of its cultural and historical significance. I saw the same fate awaiting the East End.”
Benjy’s, Mile End
“I used to pass Benjy’s each evening on my way home from modelling sessions and I was attracted by the neon which lit up the facade, casting an exotic atmosphere. It glowed in the ethereal twilight and the betting shop next door offered a graphic contrast.”
Terminus Restaurant, Mile End
“I was fascinated by the pale tones of the peeling facade of the Terminus Restaurant. Happily this building remains, although the restaurant is long gone and replaced by an estate agents.”
Location of ‘Bus Stop, Mile End’ today (photographed by Alex Pink)
Location of ‘Benjy’s Nightclub’ today (photographed by Alex Pink)
Readers will be aware of the magnificent paintings of Doreen Fletcher which were first shown in these pages in 2015. Doreen painted the East End from 1983 until 2004, when she gave up in discouragement due to lack of interest in her work. Since 2015 Doreen has begun painting again, had two shows at Townhouse Spitalfields, and one of her paintings was shown at the National Gallery last year when she was shortlisted for the first Evening Standard Contemporary Art Award.
In 2019, there will be a major retrospective of Doreen Fletcher’s paintings at the Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts opening 25th January and running until 17th March.
Complementing the exhibition, Spitalfields Life Books are publishing a handsome hardback book of Doreen Fletcher’s paintings on November 15th, collecting more of her pictures than have ever been seen together before and revealing the full breadth of her achievement as a painter for the very first time.
Since we announced Doreen’s book last week, we have already raised most of the funding and now we just need a few more supporters. There are two ways you can help.
1. We are seeking readers who are willing to invest £1000 to make Doreen Fletcher’s book happen. If you can help, please drop me a line at spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
2. Preorder copies for yourself and your friends using the link below and we will send them to you signed by Doreen Fletcher on publication in November.
Click here to order a signed copy of DOREEN FLETCHER, PAINTINGS
Portrait of Doreen Fletcher in her studio by Stuart Freedman
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On 22nd October, 1685
The history of Spitalfields is the history of immigration and that history begins on 22nd October 1685, when the Catholic Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes of 1589 which permitted Protestants to practise their religion in France.
Escaping state-sanctioned persecution, 50,000 Huguenots fled to London in fear of their lives as Elizabeth Randall, Editor of the Huguenot Society Journal, explains below. Today it is claimed that an estimated 90% of the population of the South East of England has Huguenot ancestry.
Click here for details of the current Huguenot Festival which runs until 28th October
Paul Bommer’s commemorative plaque on the Hanbury Hall
The 22nd of October in 1685 is a date not easily forgotten by descendants of French Calvinist Protestants because from that day they were forbidden to practise their religion in their homeland. King Henri IV’s decree of 1598, which had protected the rights of his Huguenot subjects, ceased to be recognised after 22nd of October 1685 and all French citizens were obligated to become members of the Catholic Church.
This change in the law was not unexpected since – after Henri’s assassination in 1610 – the civil and religious freedoms set out in his 1598 Edict of Nantes were gradually eroded. Once his grandson, Louis XIV, had taken over the reins of government in 1661, it became clear that both Church and State were determined to remove what little tolerance the Huguenots still received. They were excluded from professions, their schools were closed and their assemblies abolished. In some cases, children were removed from their parents to be educated as Catholics. The destruction of their churches – built by ‘heretics’ – was ordered and in 1681 the dragonnades began: troops were billeted in Protestant homes with orders to treat them as roughly as possible and bully them into conversion.
According to Louis XIV’s Edict of the 22nd of October 1685, there were now no more Protestants in France. All remaining Huguenot churches were destroyed and Huguenot ministers were given fifteen days’ notice to leave the country. Anyone attempting to revive Protestant worship was severely punished with men sent to work as galley slaves and women imprisoned in Catholic convents. Even worse, no-one could emigrate without permission.
Faced with such threats, it might seems inevitable that all Huguenots would turn to Catholicism or at least make an outward show of doing so. Yet there were many who refused to bow to Louis XIV’s decree and were prepared to risk making the perilous escape from France, even though this would mean sacrificing their homes and livelihood. Between 1681 and 1720, as many as 200,000 Huguenots are estimated to have taken this course, with perhaps 50,000 of those coming to London.
England had become a haven for Protestant refugees since the early years of the Reformation and London’s busy commercial world was an attraction. A church for ‘strangers’ was founded by Edward VI in Threadneedle Street in 1550 and French-speaking immigrants made their homes outside the City walls in Bishopsgate, where they could pursue a cottage weaving industry without interference from the powerful City guilds. Thus a number of French Huguenot weavers already had connections in Spitalfields, Norton Folgate and Bethnal Green, and made it their destination in the years following October 1685.
Like his cousin Louis XIV, King Charles II of England was a grandson of Henri IV of France, but as king of a Protestant country he looked kindly on Huguenots escaping the dragonnades in 1681. He offered them privileges and immunities, granted them financial support and gave them the status of free denizens. But Charles died a few months before the 22nd of October 1685 and for a while English royal protection looked less certain. Yet the Huguenot refugees were reassured when the devoutly Calvinist William III came to the English throne in 1688. The Church of England also showed sympathy, organising collections on a national scale, and the Bishop of London was responsible for much of the relatively smooth passage of Huguenot settlement in the capital.
The large influx of Protestant strangers that arrived in England as the result of Louis XIV’s fateful decree of the 22nd of October 1685 was no doubt the cause of some protests, but on the whole the newcomers appear to have been well received. The English public were aware of the sufferings of French Huguenots and respected their firm beliefs, their perseverance and their fortitude. Early suspicions that the refugees might include a fifth column of French enemies were soon allayed by the immigrants’ demonstrations of loyalty to their host society and their hard work. By 1700, seven new French Reformed churches had been established in Spitalfields with more to follow. Within each of them, elders and ministers looked after the spiritual needs of members of the congregation and deacons assisted with their welfare. The Huguenots showed themselves to be a well-organised community who supported each other and – once the advantages of the skills they brought were appreciated – it was apparent that the nation could benefit from their presence.
The influx of Huguenot refugees introduced new techniques and methods to the home-grown weaving industry in Spitalfields. In particular, it expanded the production of silk fabric. Woven silk was first made in China in the Middle Ages and its manufacture moved slowly westwards until it reached France via Italy in 1521. Ironically, the introduction of the silk trade in France coincided with the beginnings of the Reformation and many of the workers employed in the French silk-weaving industry were Protestants who left France for England after Louis XIV’s decree.
There was limited knowledge of silk production in the English workshops in London and Canterbury, but the arrival of skilled Huguenot silk weavers from such centres as Tours and Lyons transformed the native industry beyond recognition. Sophisticated materials such as lustrings, velvets, brocades and damasks could now be made in Spitalfields, using raw silk delivered through the port of London. Entirely new colours and designs changed the nature of the market, and fed the contemporary English taste for fashionable silk garments and richly decorated domestic interiors.
Before long, several of the master weavers – for example those from Normandy – grew prosperous and could afford to own houses in Princelet St, Spital Sq and beyond. In this way, they created their own demand for luxury silk products. By the end of the eighteenth century, as many as 30,000 workers were employed in the Spitalfields silk trade. And, in spite of the drastic decline that the industry suffered later, there were still forty-six workshops in Bethnal Green in 1914 and some of those employees were of Huguenot descent.
The memory of the Huguenots continues to make itself felt in Spitalfields, although we can no longer hear their singing birds or their incantation of psalms, or see them tending the gardens. We are reminded of them by place-names such as Fournier St and Fleur de Lis St, and can find traces of their lives and deaths in Christ Church, where Peter Prelleur was the first organist in 1736.
On 22nd October, spare a thought for Louis XIV’s Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685 which was the catalyst for the mass Huguenot migration of the succeeding years.
Sundial in Fournier St recording the date of the building of the Huguenot Church.
Brick Lane Mosque was originally built in 1743 as a Huguenot Church, “L’Eglise de l’Hôpital,” replacing an earlier wooden chapel on the same site, and constructed with capacious vaults which could be rented out to brewers or vintners to subsidise running costs.
Water head from 1725 at 27 Fournier St with the initials of Pierre Bourdain, a wealthy Huguenot weaver who became Headborough and had the house built for him.
Coat of arms in the Hanbury Hall dating from 1740, when “La Patente” Church moved into the building, signifying the patent originally granted by James II.
In Artillery Lane, one of London oldest shop fronts, occupied from 1720 by Nicholas Jourdain, Huguenot Silk Mercer and Director of the French Hospital.
Memorial in Christ Church.
Memorial in Christ Church.
In Folgate St, a spool indicating a former Huguenot residence.
Graffiti in French in a weavers’ loft in Elder St
Former Huguenot residence in Elder St.
The Fleur de Lis was adopted as the symbol of the Huguenots.
Sandys Row Synagogue was originally built by the Huguenots as “L’Eglise de l’Artillerie” in 1766.
Sandys Row Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
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So Long, Madge Darby Of Wapping
It is with sadness that I report the death of Madge Darby, Historian of Wapping, at the fine age of ninety-one in September. I am privileged to have met Madge who – more than anyone else you could find – originated from Wapping and spoke for the people of Wapping. Madge was the last of ‘the Darbys of Wapping.’
“People have always come here, either to convert us or to rip us off.”
No-one knew more about the history of Wapping than Madge Darby, a woman who made it her life’s imperative to recount the story of her people. And when Madge spoke of Wapping – as she did frequently – she used the word “us” or she simply said “we.” This was her natural prerogative, because there are records of her family beginning with an Elizabeth Darby, christened there in 1636, while on her mother’s side, her great-great-grandfather, Robert Petley, and his family were turned out of their home at the beginning of in the nineteenth century for the building of St Katherine’s Dock. Thus, the story of the Darbys is the story of the place and it is a narrative with a certain poignancy because, at ninety-one years old, after so many generations, Madge was the last of the Darbys in Wapping.
Yet Madge was not a sentimentalist and she occupied a central position in the neighbourhood – culturally, as chairman of the History of Wapping Trust and topographically, residing in an old terrace at Wapping Pierhead, cheek by jowl amongst the celebrities and bankers who have come to Wapping in recent years. It was here I visited Madge, discovering her in the dining room surrounded by the paperwork from the latest edition of her history of Wapping, “Piety & Piracy.”
“People have always come here, either to convert us or to rip us off,” she declared to me in explanation of the title of her book. And her eyes sparkled with emotion as she waved an estate agent’s circular which revealed that a neighbouring house had just sold for millions, thereby offering evidence of the nature of piracy in contemporary Wapping. Born in 1927 in Old Gravel Lane, five minutes walk away, Madge and her family were twice displaced from their home, once for a road widening that never happened and once as part of a slum clearance programme.
“I’m not in favour of the housing policy that has pushed most of the indigenous people out and broken up the community,” she admitted frankly, deeply disappointed that recent generations of her family have been unable to find homes in the neighbourhood. A situation that she ascribed to escalating property prices and a social housing programme which, for decades, made little provision for those without children, forcing them to seek homes elsewhere.
“We were lucky to find this before the prices went up,” she said, casting her eyes around her appealingly dishevelled terrace house that she moved into in 1975 with her brother and mother, both of whom she cared for until they died there. “These houses were built in 1811 for dock staff and when we came there was only one tap. It took us years to save up to get heating installed.” she recalled. As a child, Madge took piano lessons with a Miss Edith Pack in one of the adjoining buildings, overlooking the entrance to the docks, and was commonly distracted by the ships passing the window.
Apart from a brief period of evacuation to Whitchurch, Madge was in London for most of the war, attending Raine’s School which operated in Spital Sq before moving up to Dalston where Madge took her school certificates, prior to entering Queen Mary College to study History in 1945. In Madge’s memory, the streets of Wapping always smelled of spices, while in Spitalfields the smell of cabbages from the market prevailed.
Madge explained that her approach to history was based upon the evidence of surviving documentation. “Our dear mother used to say to us,’You’ll have to burn all those old letters in my bureau when I’m gone.'” Madge told me with a twinkle in her eye, “And I always replied, ‘Why? Where are you going dear?'” After her mother’s death, Madge published these letters in five volumes, comprising correspondence and diaries that tell the intertwining histories of her family and Wapping from 1886 until the beginning of our own century. The final volume was Madge’s personal memoir, commencing, “As soon as I became aware of the world around me, I found that I lived in Wapping. Wapping seemed to me a wonderful place and I could never understand how anyone fortunate enough to have been born there could wish to move away.”
We left the house and walked out to take a stroll upon the lawn at the Pierhead, overlooking the Thames, and we sat together overlooking the water in the sunshine. But while I only saw an empty expanse, Madge could remember when the docks were working at capacity and the river was busy with traffic. Madge told me about the previous inhabitants of the Pierhead before the current residents from the world of celebrity chatshows and bankers’ bonuses. Then, searching further in her mind, she spoke with excitement of Captain Bligh and Judge Jefferies in Wapping, both of whom are subjects of her books. “Wapping only became part of London in the seventeenth century,” she informed me with a tinge of regret, “Stowe describes it as one of the suburbs.”
With her thick white hair cropped into nineteen-thirties-style bob and her lively blue eyes, Madge was the picture of animation.“We carry on, we do our best,” she reassured me, speaking both of herself and of Wapping.
“As soon as I became aware of the world around me, I found that I lived in Wapping. Wapping seemed to me a wonderful place and I could never understand how anyone fortunate enough to have been born there could wish to move away.”
Madge’s house is one room deep, with windows facing onto the road and towards the river.
Madge in the rose garden at Wapping Pierhead outside the former Dockmaster’s House.
The house in Cable St where Madge’s father, Harry Darby, was born.
My Scrap Collection
For some time, I have been collecting Victorian scraps of tradesmen and street characters. I am especially fascinated by the mixture of whimsical fantasy and social observation in these colourful miniatures, in which even the comic grotesques are derived from the daily reality of the collectors who once cherished these images.
Street Photographer
Exotic Birds
Sweets & Dainties
Acrobat & Performing Dog
Performing Dogs
The Muffin Man
Street Musician
Street Musician
Baker
Smoker
Butcher
Waiter
Itinerant
Sweep
Naturalist
Lounge Lizard
Dustman
Costermonger
Spraying the roads
Milkman
Knife Grinder
Scottish Herring Girls followed the shoals around the East Coast, gutting and packing the herring.
Herring Girl
You may like to see these other scraps from my collection
