A Walk Along The Black Path
Sculpture of porters resting at London Fields
Taking to heart the observation by the celebrated poet & resident of Aldgate, Geoffrey Chaucer, that April is the time to go on pilgrimages, I set out last week for day’s walk in the sunshine along the ancient Black Path from Walthamstow to Shoreditch. The route of this primeval footpath is still clearly visible upon the map of the East End today, as if someone had taken a crayon and scrawled a curved diagonal line across the grid of the modern street plan. There is no formal map of the Black Path yet any keen walker with a sense of direction may follow it as I did.
Tracing a trajectory running northeast and southwest between Shoreditch Church and the crossing of the River Lea at Clapton, the Black Path links with Old St in one direction and extends beyond Walthamstow in the other. Sometimes called the Porter’s Way, this was the route cattle were driven to Smithfield and the path used by smallholders taking produce to Spitalfields Market. Sometimes also called the Templars’ Way, it links the thirteenth century St Augustine’s Tower on land once owned by Knights Templar in Hackney with the Priory of St John in Clerkenwell where they had their headquarters. No-one knows how old the Black Path is or why it has this name, but it once traversed open country before the roads existed. These days the path is black because it has a covering of asphalt.
On the warmest day of spring I took the train from Liverpool St Station up to Walthamstow to commence my walk, seeking respite in the sunshine after the harsh winter that outstayed its allotted season. In observance of custom, I commenced my pilgrimage at an inn, setting out from The Bell and following the winding road through Walthamstow to the market. A tavern by this name has stood at Bell Corner for centuries and the street that leads southwest from it, once known as Green Leaf Lane, reveals its ancient origin in its curves that trace the contours of the land.
Struggling to resist the delights of pie & mash and magnificent 99p shops, I felt like Bunyan’s pilgrim avoiding the temptations of Vanity Fair as I wandered through Walthamstow Market which extends for a mile down the High St to St James, gradually sloping away down towards the marshes. Here I turned left onto St James St itself before following Station Rd and then weaving southwest through late nineteenth century terraces, sprawling over the incline, to emerge at the level of the Walthamstow Marshes.
Then I walked along Markhouse Avenue which leads into Argall Industrial Estate, traversed by a narrow footpath enclosed with high steel fences on each side. Here you may find Allied Bakeries, Bates Laundry and evangelical churches including Deliverance Outreach Mission, Praise Harvest Community Church, Celestial Church of Christ, Mountain of Fire & Miracle Ministries and Christ United Ministries, revealing that religion may be counted as an industry in this location.
Crossing an old railway bridge and a broad tributary of the River Lea brought me onto the Leyton Marshes where I was surrounded by leaves unfurling, buds popping and blossom exploding – natural wonders that characterise the rush of spring at this sublime moment of the year. Horses graze on the marshes and the dense blackthorn hedge which lines the footpath provided a sufficiently bucolic background to evoke a sense that I was walking an ancient footpath through a rural landscape. Yet already the municipal parks department were out, unable to resist taking advantage of the sunlight to give the verges a fierce trim with their mechanical mower even before the the plants have properly sprouted.
It was a surprise to find myself amidst the busy traffic again as I crossed the Lea Bridge and found myself back in the East End, of which the River Lea is its eastern boundary. The position of this crossing – once a ford, then a ferry and finally a bridge – defines the route of the Black Path, tracing a line due southwest from here.
I followed the diagonal path bisecting the well-kept lawn of Millfields and walked up Powerscroft Rd to arrive in the heart of Hackney at St Augustine’s Tower, built in 1292 and a major landmark upon my route. Yet I did not want to absorb the chaos of this crossroads where so many routes meet at the top of Mare St, instead I walked quickly past the Town Hall and picked up the quiet footpath next to the museum known as Hackney Grove. This byway has always fascinated me, leading under the railway line to emerge onto London Fields.
The drovers once could graze their cattle, sheep and geese overnight on this common land before setting off at dawn for Smithfield Market, a practice recalled today in the names of Sheep Lane and the Cat & Mutton pub. The curve of Broadway Market leading through Goldsmith’s Row down to Columbia Rd reveals its origin as a cattle track. From the west end of Columbia Rd, it was a short walk along Virginia Rd on the northern side of the Boundary Estate to arrive at my destination, Shoreditch Church.
If I chose to follow ancient pathways further, I could have walked west along Old St towards Bath, north up the Kingsland Rd to York, east along the Roman Rd towards Colchester or south down Bishopsgate to the City of London. But flushed and footweary after my six mile hike in the heat of the sun, I was grateful to return home to Spitalfields and put my feet up in the shade of the house. For millennia, when it was the sole route, countless numbers travelled along the old Black Path from Walthamstow to Shoreditch, but last week there was just me on my solitary pilgrimage.
At Bell Corner, Walthamstow
‘Fellowship is Life’
Two quinces for £1.50 in Walthamstow Market
Walthamstow Market is a mile long
‘struggling to resist the delights of pie & mash’
At St James St
Station Rd
‘leaves unfurling, buds popping and blossom exploding which characterise the rush of spring’
Enclosed path through Argall Industrial Estate skirting Allied Bakeries
Argall Avenue
‘These days the path is black because it has a covering of asphalt’
Railway bridge leading to the Leyton marshes
A tributary of the River Lea
Horses graze on the Leyton marshes
“dense blackthorn which line the footpath provided a sufficiently bucolic background to evoke a sense that I was walking an ancient footpath”
‘the municipal parks department were out, unable to resist taking advantage of the sunlight to give the verges a fierce trim with their mechanical mower even before the the plants have properly sprouted’
The River Lea is the eastern boundary of the East End
Across Millfields Park towards Powerscroft Rd
Thirteenth century St Augustine’s Tower in Hackney
Worn steps in Hackney Grove
In London Fields
At Cat & Mutton Bridge, Broadway Market
Columbia Rd
St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch
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The Map Of The Coffee Houses
Each Saturday, we shall be featuring one of Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND from the forthcoming book of his extraordinary cartography to be published by Spitalfields Life Books & Batsford on June 7th.
Please support this ambitious venture by pre-ordering a copy, which will be signed by Adam Dant with an individual drawing on the flyleaf and sent to you on publication. CLICK TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND BY ADAM DANT
Click on the map to enlarge and read the stories of the Coffee Houses
These days, London is riddled with Coffee Shops but, at the start, there was just the Jamaica Coffee House, which was opened in 1652 by Pasqua Rosee in St Michael’s Alley in the City of London. More than three hundred and fifty years later, it is still open and so I met Adam Dant there to learn about his new map – which you see above – drawn in the shape of a coffee pot.
“I’ve always wanted to do a map of the Coffee Houses, because it marks a moment when intellectual activity had a parity with mercantile activity. They called them the penny universities,” he explained, eagerly quaffing a glass of Italian red wine in the mid-afternoon. “And it wasn’t just coffee they sold but alcohol too,” he added, fleshing out the historical background as he sipped his glass, “so you could get drunk in one corner and sober up with coffee in another.”
The first Coffee Houses became popular meeting places, facilitating introductions between those of similar interests, fostering deals, trading, and business enterprises. Lloyds of London began as a Coffee House, opened by Edward Lloyd in Lombard St around 1688, where the customers were sailors, merchants and shipowners who brokered insurance among themselves, leading to the creation of the insurance market.
“People complain about the proliferation of Coffee Houses today,” admitted Adam Dant with a sigh, before emptying his glass, “But there were thirty here in these streets behind the Royal Exchange, until a fire that started in a peruke shop burnt them all down. The only reason we know where they all were is because somebody was commissioned to draw a map of them, assessing the damage.”
Executed in ink of an elegant coffee hue and bordered with Coffee House tokens, Adam Dant’s beautiful map gives you the stories and the locations of nineteen different Coffee Houses in the City. Fulfilled with such devoted attention to detail, Adam’s cartography of caffeine led me to assume this must be a labour of love for one who is addicted to coffee, yet – to my surprise – I discovered this was not the case.”I drink expresso at Allpress in Redchurch St,” Adam confessed to me, “but the best coffee is at Present, the gentlemen’s clothiers, in Shoreditch High St. I like to drink three cups before dinner and one after, but, fortunately, I am not a creature of habit and I could easily go three months without drinking coffee.”
Adam Dant at the Jamaica Coffee House in St Michael’s Alley
CLICK TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND BY ADAM DANT
Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND is a mighty monograph collecting together all your favourite works by Spitalfields Life‘s cartographer extraordinaire in a beautiful big hardback book.
Including a map of London riots, the locations of early coffee houses and a colourful depiction of slang through the centuries, Adam Dant’s vision of city life and our prevailing obsessions with money, power and the pursuit of pleasure may genuinely be described as ‘Hogarthian.’
Unparalleled in his draughtsmanship and inventiveness, Adam Dant explores the byways of English cultural history in his ingenious drawings, annotated with erudite commentary and offering hours of fascination for the curious.
The book includes an extensive interview with Adam Dant by The Gentle Author.
Adam Dant’s limited edition prints are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts
Shakespeare’s Dark Lady of Spitalfields
Poet Niall McDevitt writes about Emilia Bassano Lanier, who was a long-term resident of Spital Sq and believed by many to be the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’ of the Sonnets. On Sunday 22nd & 29th April at 2pm, Niall leads a walk starting at Tower Hill visiting the locations of Emilia’s life and telling her story. Click here to book.
Portrait miniature by Nicholas Hillard
Emilia Bassano Lanier is one of the most distinguished people to be born in Spitalfields, yet her reputation only grew four centuries after her death.
She was born in Spital Sq early in 1569 and baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate on 27th January. Her family situation was highly unusual. Technically, Emilia was a bastard since her father Baptista Bassano was not married to her mother Margaret Johnson although they lived together as a couple. Baptista was a racial outsider, a Sephardic Jew from the Veneto region of Italy with family connections to Venice and the small town of Bassano del Grappa. As Jews had no legal status in England at that time, he should not even have been there officially.
Yet he was not alone. There were growing numbers of Bassanos in London. Henry VIII invited six Bassano brothers over to London as court musicians. They were a prodigious musical family who doubled up as fine instrument makers. Perhaps the brothers explained their reservations about their racial origin to Henry VIII’s negotiators and were told not to worry. Were they crypto-Jews, known as ‘Marranos’ then? It is not known for certain whether they practised Judaism, though it is not unlikely. In those days, a little Protestant window-dressing was sufficient to cover up secularism or any other illicit belief.
The Anglo-Italian, Anglo-Jewish Emilia grew up in an artistic and courtly milieu. Her father and uncles played in the royal palaces such as Greenwich and big houses such as Baynards Castle, as well as the burgeoning inn-yard theatres such as The Cross Keys in Gracechurch St. Interestingly, while most of the extended Bassano family lived in a mansion on Mark Lane, Emilia’s father Baptista lived separately in a row of three properties on Spital Sq, close to the site of the former church of St Mary Spital. There he died in 1576 – the same year James Burbage’s Theatre was constructed – and was buried at St Botolph’s Bishopsgate.
Emilia’s status as minor gentry meant she was familiar with aristocracy if not quite of it. At six, she went to live in the London home of Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent, possibly the original Willoughby House in the Barbican. She was fortunate to find herself in a Protestant humanist circle that prized education for women and she was brilliantly tutored. The musical talent that ran in her family was enriched by literary and philosophical learning. She became a musician and writer, although debarred by her gender from any professional status.
Yet despite the obstacles, Emilia became the first woman in England to publish a collection of her own poetry. Her Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) is a profoundly Christian poem told from a feminist point of view two centuries before Mary Wollstonecraft who – coincidentally – was also born in Spitalfields. Note Emilia’s daring philosemitic title: ‘Hail God, King of the Jews.’ But her radical epic was ignored and forgotten and she died in 1645 at the great age of seventy-six, uncelebrated, and was buried at St James Clerkenwell.
It is thanks to the London diarist Simon Forman – also healer, astrologer and magician – that Emilia is remembered. He had many clients from all walks of Elizabethan-Jacobean society and his casebooks are full of detailed notes. In the last century, A.L. Rowse found information about Emilia among a mass of Forman’s unpublished papers.
During consultations, Emilia revealed to Forman that she had become the mistress of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain – patron of Shakespeare’s troupe, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men – when she was eighteen and he was sixty-three. Falling pregnant by him in 1592, she was forced to marry her cousin Alphonse Lanier, another musician, yet the affair with Carey continued until his death in 1596. Carey showered her with gifts and annuities which her aggrieved husband confiscated. Additionally, Forman tells of his own frustrated affair with Emilia who permitted every intimacy except penetration. This angered Forman and in his diary he accused her of sexual magic, ‘raising incuba’ and ‘villainy.’ He portrays Emilia as a dark, scheming psychopathic figure who inspires fear and, from 1600, she ceases to feature in his writings.
But Emilia Bassano Lanier may have had another advocate. She is arguably the subject of one of the most celebrated sequences of poetry in literature, Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Sonnets 127-154 concern not so much a lady who is dark but a ‘mistress’ who is ‘black’. This does not imply an Afro-Carribean origin but someone dark-haired, dark-eyed, and ‘dun’ of complexion, such as an Italian Sephardic Jewess. The sonnets are a portrait in verse of someone remarkably similar in character and appearance to the woman that Forman desribes. The arc of both narratives is also similar – a sexually charged affair that ends in an atmosphere of toxic recrimination. Consequently, A.L. Rowse declared Emilia Lanier to be Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’ in the seventies and a host of proponents and opponents have followed ever since.
For Emilia Bassano Lanier, oblivion is over. She now has a place in the canon of English literature as an esteemed poet and feminist in her own right, as well as potentially being the female subject of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Emilia is becoming more and more present.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
Portrait miniature by Nicholas Hilliard believed to be William Shakespeare
Sixteenth century drawing of St Mary Spital as Emilia Bassano Lanier may have known it with gabled wooden houses lining Bishopsgate
Title page of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum by Emilia Basson Lanier, 1611, the first collection of poetry published by a woman in England
Simon Forman, Diarist, Healer, Astrologer and Magician c.1611
Spital Sq, home of Emilia Lanier who may have been the inspiration for the ‘Dark Lady’ of the Sonnets
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Last Of The Crooners At The Palm Tree
This Saturday 21st April promises to be a big night at The Palm Tree in Mile End. Accompanying the opening of an exhibition of portraits of celebrated musicians by photographer Tom Oldham is the release of limited edition of five hundred copies of The Last of The Crooners, a record of live recordings of the performers (including a portfolio of portraits) for £20 available exclusively on a first-come-first-served basis at the pub. The exhibition opens at 7pm and the music starts at 9pm.
“Jack Honeyborne on keys, Alan Jackson on drum and Izzy on bass, playing a more freeform instrumental track prior to the singer stepping up.”
Jack Honeyborne – “Jack used to perform with Vera Lynn and maintains the heyday for modern music in this country was before the rot set in, in the fifties.”
Charlie Willis – “Charismatic singer Charlie used to sing in down in the tube stations during the Second World War. They’d ask him to get up and give us a song, which is how he started performing.”
Alan Jackson – “The other rock solid element of the Palm Tree Trio rhythm section is Alan Jackson on drums. Cheeky, but an incredible talent at beating a jazz pattern out of the modest cocktail kit that comprises the absolute minimum of luxuries for a drummer.”
Izzy – “Izzy play bass. He’s the backbone of a rock solid rhythm section and one third of the Palm Tree Trio.”
Andy Gangadeen – “a drummer of world reknown, having played with greats such as Massive Attack, Jeff Beck and a huge variety of artists going back thirty years. He happily sits in at the Palm Tree and loves the gig for its challenges and the free range creativity it demands.”
Helen Keating – “Helen Keating is so glamorous it’s almost impossible to believe she’s almost eighty-one, dare I say it. She is a true performer and reglaulary played the last Sunday of every month for next twenty-five years before retiring a few months back. She also performed in Minder and the Sweeney back in the day.”
Bruce – “Bruce is a pianist at the Palm Tree and guests at the old piano occasionally. He plays beautifully and always makes a welcome return to the little stage.”
Shireen Francis – “Shireen has a beauty in her voice that brings so much to these old songs, everytime. A proper journeyman singer, she regularly performs all over London but still gives every show her all. A delight to see if you’re every in.”
Colin Anthony – “Colin Anthony is a guest singer and regularly travels to Bow to guest on the mic at The Palm Tree. He adds a stylish air of panache to the proceedings, as well as performing with a voice truly reminiscent of Tony Bennett.”
Kerrie Barrett – “daughter of Alf & Val, landlord & landlady at the Palm Tree. She’s also the owner of a great set of vocal chords and often graces the stage at the weekend to sing a jazz standard or two, which everyone looks forward to.”
“generations of talent have stepped onto the stage at the Palm Tree”
Photographs copyright © Tom Oldham
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At The Caslon Foundry In Chiswell St
22/23 Chiswell St
Chiswell St is a canyon lined with glass and steel buildings leading from Moorgate to the Barbican today, yet once this was the centre of printing in the City of London. The foundry established by William Caslon in 1737, Britain’s most celebrated type designer, stood here until 1937. For more than two centuries, Caslon was the default typeface for printing in the English language and when the Americans wanted to make their Declaration of Independence and publish their Constitution, they imported type from the Caslon Foundry in Chiswell St to do it.
These historic photographs from St Bride Printing Library, taken in 1902 upon the occasion of the opening of the new Caslon factory in Hackney Wick, record both the final decades of the unchanged work of traditional type-founding, as well as the mechanisation of the process that would eventually lead to the industry being swept away by the end of the century.
22/23 Chiswell St with Caslon’s delivery van outside the foundry
The Directors’ Room with portraits of William Caslon and Elizabeth Caslon
Sydney Caslon Smith in his office
Clerks’ office, 15th November 1902. A woman sits at her typewriter in the centre of the office.
Type store with fonts being made up in packets by women and boys working by candlelight
Another view of the type store with women making up packets of fonts
Another view of the type store
Another part of the type store
In the type store
A boy makes up a packet of fonts in the type store
Room of printers’ supplies including type cases, forme trolleys and electro cabinets
Another view of the printers’ supplies store
Printing office on an upper floor with pages of type specimens being set and printed on Albion and Imperial handpresses.
Packing department with crates labelled GER, GWR, LNWR, CALCUTTA, BOMBAY, and SYDNEY
New Caslon Letter Foundry at Rothbury Rd, Hackney Wick, 1902
Harold Arthur Caslon Smith at his rolltop desk in Hackney Wick with type specimens from 1780 on the wall, Friday 7th November, 1902
Machine shop with plane, lathes and overhead belting
Gas engines and man with oil can
Lathes in the Machine Shop
Hand forging in the Machine Shop
Another view of lathes in the Machine Shop
Type store with fonts being made up into packets
Type matrix and mould store
Metal store with boy hauling pigs upon a trolley
Casting Shop, with women breaking off excess metal and rubbing the type at the window
Another view of the Casting Shop.
Another view of the Casting Shop
Founting Shop, with women breaking up the type and a man dressing the type
Casting metal furniture
Boys at work in the Brass Rule Shop
Boys making packets of fonts in the Despatch Shop, with delivery van waiting outside the door
Machine shop on the top floor with a fly-press in the bottom left
Woodwork Shop
Brass Rule Shop, hand-planing the rules
Caretaker’s cottage with caretaker’s wife and the factory cat
Photographs courtesy St Bride Printing Library
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William Caslon, Letter Founder
A Chance To Visit The Old London Hospital
Inhabited only by the lonely ghost of Joseph Merrick, the former Royal London Hospital building in Whitechapel sits in limbo awaiting its new purpose as Town Hall for the Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Yet before the redevelopment begins there is a chance to take a guided tour of the hospital estate on Saturday 28th April, courtesy of the Survey of London whose volume on the buildings of Whitechapel will be published next year. Click here to book.
Contributing Photographer Phil Maxwell was granted privileged access to record the empty hospital. His new film Pensioners United, created in collaboration with Hazuan Hashim, has its premiere at the East End Film Festival on Friday 27th April. Click here to book.
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
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At The House Mill
The House Mill of 1776 at Bromley by Bow is the largest tidal mill in the world and the only remaining mill at Three Mill Island on the River Lea, an artificial island created in ancient times – like Venice – by driving thousands of wooden stakes into the mud, for the purpose of harnessing the powerful tidal surge of the Thames. Daniel Bisson, a Huguenot, built the House Mill for grinding grain to bake bread and the manufacture of gin to supply London, and it functioned here until the end of World War II, before falling into disrepair.
Twenty-five years ago, William Hill saw the derelict mill from the train and came to explore. He became one of a group of committed volunteers who have been responsible for overseeing the magnificent restoration programme of recent years, and it was he who showed me round. We spent a couple of hours, climbing up and down ladders, and exploring every corner of the huge old mill, including those parts not open to visitors – enabling me to create this photographic record.
Initials of Daniel Bisson, builder of the mill, and his wife Sarah
View down the River Lea
Some of the beams at House Mill are one hundred foot long and may be recycled ships’ timbers
Nineteenth century wooden patterns for casting the machinery of the mill
Stretcher frames from World War I
Hopper where the grain was channelled down to the mill stones
The oasthouses and the clock mill
The Miller’s staircase
Millstones
Pegs where the millers hung their coats
Mill worker in the nineteen thirties
The same spot today
Iron frames for the nineteenth century mill wheels
The Clockmill
Visit The House Mill, Three Mill Lane, Bromley by Bow, London E3 3DU
Volunteers are always required to act as stewards, guides and to run the cafe at the House Mill. If you would like to help, please contact info@housemill.org.uk
