At Verdi’s
Anna & Mimi Orsi
Along the Mile End Rd between the City and Bow, there is only one Italian restaurant of distinction. It is Verdi’s, a fine establishment offering a generous welcome and authentic northern Italian food at highly reasonable prices. Early in the week, a two course meal can be had for a tenner, yet everything – including the pasta – is prepared on the premises from fresh ingredients and the bread is baked daily.
Set in an old terrace between Stepney Green tube and Mile End Place, this restaurant is run with scrupulous devotion and panache by sisters Anna & Mimi Orsi who are continuing a family culinary tradition which extends back a century in the East End. Old photographs on the walls attest to this Orsi legacy, complemented by elegant drawings by local artist Dorothy Rendell whom I interviewed last year.
Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I enjoyed the privilege of visiting on St Giuseppe’s Day recently to savour the traditional cuisine and discover the story behind this cherished family restaurant. We learnt it was a significant day in recognition of Giuseppe Verdi but – more importantly – celebrating ‘Giuseppe’ as the name adopted by generations of men in the Orsi family, just as Anna & Mimi have been the chosen names for the women as long as anyone can remember. Yet I must confess we were most excited about the customary St Giuseppe’s Day dish of calves’ liver with spinach, prepared in the time-honoured fashion.
While Patricia Niven disappeared into the kitchen to photograph chef Marcio Polezia preparing his St Giuseppe’s Day speciality, I settled down hungrily to enjoy a dish of home made tortellini in brodo as the first course of this special meal.
Soon enough, the calves’ liver served with spinach, mashed potato and red onions arrived. As one accustomed to eating leathery calves’ liver that is almost dry, this was a succulent treat – still pink inside – complemented by tangy spinach that was cooked just sufficiently to retain its delicious texture.
After such a memorable lunch, I had the pleasure of Mimi & Anna Orsi joining me at the table and telling me the extraordinary story behind their wonderful restaurant. It was only my first visit to Verdi’s but I already knew it would be first of many.
Anna – The story of our family in London begins in Clerkenwell.
Mimi – Our nonno [grandfather] Giuseppe, he came here more than hundred years ago and lived in Warner St, Back Hill at the back of the Italian church. He walked from Parma where we come from and he made his way to Paris, where he stopped and worked there for a year, then he moved over to London.
Anna – He walked to London and – as all Italians did – he knocked on the kitchen door of the Savoy and said ‘I’m Italian’ and they said ‘Come in and start working.”
Mimi – After a while he became a chef and, once made some money, he sold his half of the family house in Parma to his brother. With the money – he had a hundred pounds – he bought his first cafe in Robin Hood Lane, Poplar while he was living in Back Hill. It was called ‘The Grand Cafe.’
Anna – Italians aren’t very adventurous with their names for cafes. You have probably seen those around Liverpool St Station called ‘Savoy,’ that’s because they used to work at the Savoy. My nonno, he called his ‘The Grand Cafe’ because the most expensive and most beautiful one was The Grand Cafe.
Mimi – When the Second World War broke out, he was going to be an Italian in London and he had trouble.
Anna – Mostly – my dad said – they came from Canning Town and they wanted to smash the cafe up. The police came along they would not stop them, so the Irish publican from the next street climbed over the back fence. He said, ‘Joe, get the kids and everybody out,’ so they all went over the fence to the pub. Then the Irish publican and my father stood outside the cafe to face the men who were gathered there.
Mimi – The police stood back and said to the people, ‘You’ve got five minutes to do what you want,’ stealing cigarettes and food.
Anna – It wasn’t that they hated them or had any bad feelings towards Italians personally, it was just an opportunity to grab.
Mimi – It was the war and Italy was the enemy.
Anna – My nonno said to them, ‘There’s more of you than us – there’s only two of us – but the first man that comes near my cafe I will kill.’ So they never came near it! After that, he put up the photograph in the cafe of my uncle in uniform fighting for Britain to stop them doing it again.
Mimi – He hid his wife and children down at Leigh on Sea with his mother.
Anna – She was meant to be interned, so every time a policeman came around they used to push her into the bushes to hide.
Mimi – If she had been caught, she would have been interned and possibly sent on the Andorra Star that sank.
Anna – The layout of our restaurant today is identical to The Grand Cafe
Mimi – When many Italians came over to London, it was their first port of call and they’d work for him for two or three months, washing up or peeling potatoes, and they’d sleep upstairs until they got accommodation.
Anna – After the war, they employed Mimi – a lovely lady.
Mimi – During the war, she had been in Italy. Our family were partisans, helping the British and Americans get over to Switzerland. She had two cellars under where she kept the cows and she hid a British and an American officer when the Germans came. She tripped the German up on purpose to distract his attention, so he got his gun and held it to her head. He was about to shoot her, but she said, ‘No I tripped!’ and pointed to her toe that she had cut working on the farm that morning. There was still blood on it.
Anna – And the British and American soldiers got away! After the war, they used to come to nonno’s cafe to see Mimi because if it weren’t for her, they’d all be dead.
Mimi – She was a nanny and she brought my father up and then she married into the Biffa family, famous for their dustcarts.
Anna – The cafe ran until 1964 when my nonno died…
Mimi – … but my nonna [grandmother] carried it on until the late seventies, though she couldn’t do it on her own.
Anna – We used to love it!
Mimi – We used to run and see our nonna, she always had chocolates to give us and she used to say, ‘Go downstairs to the restaurant and behind the bar.’
Anna – She used to let us take boxes of Blue Ribbon chocolates home.
Mimi – And bottles of Coca Cola.
Anna – We didn’t have sweets at home! Our parents grew up in the war.
Mimi – We wanted so much! We just used to go down and open bottles of Coca Cola. My mother used to go mad.
Anna – We had never had bottles of Coca Cola, we were only allowed lemonade on our birthdays.
Mimi – Nonna always bought us the most amazing Christmas presents, I got Tiny Tears!
Anna – We used to go the cafe and sit down as a family for Christmas dinner and eat really beautiful food.
Mimi – Going my nonna’s room was a bit scary, it was through a side door and full of old things, my father’s and his brothers and sisters’ old toys. It was dark and there was the smell of mothballs.
Anna – There was no bathroom, it was in the back yard. They used to get paid to keep the elephant from the circus in the back yard when it was in town.
Mimi – She used to make the most wonderful tortellini in brodo, which you had today.
Anna – We were always warned against opening a restaurant. Nonna said, ‘No!’
Mimi – Nonna used to pull up her dress to show two little bowed legs with varicose veins. ‘If you want legs like this, go into a restaurant,’ she warned us. She said, ‘It killed your nonno and it’s killing me.’
Anna – But we thought it would be different today.
Mimi – They cooked, they served and they cleaned.
Anna – We used to drive past this place which was once a pub, and had such a beautiful interior and high ceiling. We said, ‘Somebody should do something really amazing with it.’
Mimi – We used to go back to Italy just to eat true home Parma food and in the end we said, ‘There’s nowhere where you can get proper Italian food between Aldgate East and Bow.’ So we opened this place, and nonna was right – it’s killing us!
Anna – We grew up around restaurants and it is in our blood.
Mimi – I love the mornings! I am the early morning person and she’s the late nighter.
Anna – You take care of the cooks.
Mimi – I make sure the deliveries are in and the cleaning is done, and she does front of house. I’m domesticated, she’s not!
Anna – It’s true.
Mimi – We live across the road from each other, round the corner in Mile End. We were always close as children.
Anna – We opened on our nonna’s birthday which was 26th July four years ago.
Mimi – I think my nonna would be so proud of us …
Anna – And especially my nonno!
Mimi – … that we carried the business on.
Tortellini in Brodo
Marcio Polezia fries the calves’ liver on St Giuseppe’s Day
Calves’ liver with red onions and sage, mashed potato and spinach is the St Giuseppe’s Day dish
Marcio Polezia, Chef & Andrea Furia, Sous Chef
Giuseppe Orsi is the boy (second from the left with the neckerchief, behind the gentleman with the big moustache) among other chefs when he worked at the Savoy in 1912
The Grand Cafe with Giuseppe Orsi standing in the long coat accompanied by the Irish landlord of the neighbouring pub in the thirties
Giuseppe Orsi (senior) shows Giuseppe Orsi (junior) how to pour a cup of tea in the early fifties
Giuseppe (junior), Anna & Mimi’s father, took over from Giuseppe (senior)
Mimi Orsi
Anna Orsi
Verdis was formerly The Three Crowns which opened before 1719 and closed in 2010
Colour photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
VERDI’S, 237 Mile End Rd, Stepney, E1 4AA
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Viscountess Boudica At Easter
On Easter Monday, we celebrate our dearly beloved Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green who once entertained us with her seasonal frolics and capers but is now exiled to Uttoxeter
She may be no Spring chicken but that never stopped the indefatigable Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green from dressing up as an Easter chick!
As is her custom at each of the festivals which mark our passage through the year, she embraced the spirit of the occasion wholeheartedly – festooning her tiny flat with seasonal decor and contriving a special outfit for herself that suited the tenor of the day. “Easter’s about renewal – birth, life and death – the end of one thing and the beginning of another,” she assured me when I arrived, getting right to the heart of it at once with characteristic forthrightness.
I felt like a child visiting a beloved grandmother or favourite aunt whenever I call round to see Viscountess Boudica because, although I never knew what treats lie in store, I was never disappointed. Even as I walked in the door, I knew that days of preparation preceded my visit. Naturally for Easter there were a great many fluffy creatures in evidence, ducks and rabbits recalling her rural childhood. “When my uncle had his farm, I used to put the little chicks in my pocket and carry them round with me,” she confided with a nostalgic grin, as she led me over to admire the wonder of her Easter garden where yellow creatures of varying sizes were gathering upon a small mat of greengrocer’s grass, around a tree hung with glass eggs, as if in expectation of a sacred ritual.
I cast my eyes around at the plethora of Easter cards, testifying to the popularity of the Viscountess, and her Easter bunting and Easter fairy lights that adorned the walls. There could be no question that the festival was anything other than Easter in this place. “As a child, I used to get a twig and spray it with paint and hang eggs from it,” she explained, recalling the modest origin of the current extravaganza and adding, “I hope this will inspire others to decorate their homes.”
“Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is my favourite,” she confessed to me, chuckling in excited anticipation and patting her waistline warily, “I probably will eat a lot of chocolate on Easter Monday – once I start eating chocolate, I can’t stop.” And then, just like that beloved grandmother or favourite aunt, Viscountess Boudica kindly slipped a chocolate egg into my hands, as I said my farewell and carried it off under my arm back to Spitalfields as a proud trophy of the day.
Viscountess Boudica writes her Easter cards
“yellow creatures of varying sizes were gathering upon a small mat of greengrocer’s grass, around a tree hung with glass eggs, as if in expectation of a sacred ritual”
Viscountess Boudica turns Weather Girl to present the forecast for the Easter Bank Holiday – “I predict a dull start with a few patches of sunshine and some isolated showers. In the West Country, it will be nice all day with temperatures between sixty and eighty degrees Farenheit. There will be a small breeze on the coast and sea temperature of around fifty-nine degrees Farenheit.”
Easter blessings to you from Viscountess Boudica!
Viscountess Boudica and her fluffy friends
Be sure to follow Viscountess Boudica’s blog There’s More To Life Than Heaven & Earth
Take a look at
The Departure of Viscountess Boudica
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween
Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas
Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day
Viscountess Boudica’s St Patrick’s Day
Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter
and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats
Bow Food Bank Portraits
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I visited Bow Food Bank to do portraits of some of the volunteers who run this vital service and learn about their motives and experiences.
Taking place at Bow Church each Monday morning, this is an independent food bank which means vouchers from the Department of Work & Pensions are not required, anyone who is in need of food can come and ask for help. Assistance to those in crisis is offered in the form of ten items of grocery every other week for up to fifteen visits.
If you would like to donate or volunteer, visit Bow Food Bank
Alison Neville, Volunteer
“I have been working here about six months. I was born in Stepney and now I live in Bow. I started coming for myself when I couldn’t work for a while. They helped me and then I became a volunteer. Even when I do the washing up, I enjoy it. Many people are struggling in this city and the price of living now is unbelievable”
Cody Hopper, Studying Modern History at Queen Mary University
“I enjoy volunteering in the community. It’s not like a job where you get paid, your reward is knowing you are helping other people. I have made friends over the last six months and it is a little community of its own here. The food bank is not just about distributing food, it’s about getting people out of their houses and offering social contact to people who might be lonely. Once I graduate and get a job, I will look for other volunteering opportunities because I enjoy it so much.”
Irena Urbonas, Volunteer
“I retired after thirty-eight years teaching in Bethnal Green about three years ago and I was working in a charity shop but I became ill and couldn’t continue. Because I have been seriously ill, I can advise and support others with serious illness. We see all kinds of problems, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, job loss. If I can help I will, but I do not impose on them. It is not just a food bank, you can get help for problems and some people come back for the social life. If this was here every day, I would come. I love it. I was born in Bethnal Green but my parents are from Lithuania and I come from a very poor background. Yet I never realised I was poor because my dad was a driver so he could borrow cars and drive us around. My mother was very strict and she realised the value of education, so we all went to grammar school. It all comes back because I have been there, and now I can help in a certain way. You see people at the lowest of the low. I do my best to welcome them and give them what they need. It does humble you. I ask people not to thank me because I don’t need their thanks.”
Trevor Blackman, Founding Director of Ape Media
“I’ve been doing this since 2014. Supposedly, I am in charge of the shop but I am here because I enjoy meeting people. The first Christmas we were open, we had one hundred and sixty people come in. There is a real need. A lot of people saw their benefits cut with the introduction of Universal Credit. It hit people hard. We had people on benefits who are struggling to feed their children and that’s horrible – we give them twenty items. Parents go without food to feed their children.”
Ruth, Volunteer
“I just love it, it gets me out of the house and talking to people. People can come here for ten visits and collect ten items and some of these people are in desperate need. Many of them are working on zero hours contracts and not getting much employment, they can’t earn enough to pay the bills. Some of these people are gutted when they get to the end of their visits and they ask me, ‘Where shall we go now?’ They have nowhere else to turn to.”
Pat O’Sullivan, Supervisor of distribution of extras at the Food Bank
“After they have been in the shop, people come to see me and I give them extras, fruit and veg, soap and women’s sanitary products. I came here myself three years ago and then I became a volunteer because I wanted to help others by giving something back. Some people who come are homeless and I have helped a couple to get jobs and find housing. I count everyone here as my friends. All my life, I have been caring for other people.”
Robert Ricks, Volunteer
“I think this place serves a good purpose, people need our services. I am particularly proud that we run it with as little bureaucracy as possible and all the money is spent on food for distribution. We don’t rely on referrals, we allow anyone to come here and get help. I am a retired lawyer and it allows me to make contact with people and be aware of those those less fortunate, whom I might never meet in any other circumstances.”
Dan Clark, Musician
“I have quite a lot of spare time in the day because I work at night. I need to get up early in the morning to come here which is hard sometimes, but I feel compelled to do it. It’s a damning condemnation of our society that people are short of food in such a rich country.”
Lynn Stone, Food Bank Manager
“We are here to address a need as far as we are able. There could be a food bank every morning of the week and still not meet everyone’s needs. If we can do a little to help some people then that makes it worthwhile, but I am sad we cannot do more. It is embarrassing for us that people are so grateful, that’s not a comfortable feeling. We see that the benefits system is not helping vulnerable people, but pushing them into a spiral of decline and need. It’s so unfair.”
Lorraine Villada, Volunteer
“I do all the administration and step in whenever there’s a gap. I do it because I feel fortunate to help people in need. There are a lot of people struggling to buy food and, with the changes in the benefits system, we are seeing a lot more people coming to sign up. I have lived in Tower Hamlets all my life. I like to give something back to the community where I was born and raised. I worked for Tower Hamlets Council but found myself out of work due to illness, but now I have a new job and I hope I shall be able to carry on here because it means a lot to me.”
Debbie Cummins, Registrar
“I am passionate to help people and I have been in the situations they have been in, so I quite understand and I love doing it. I am an East Ender born in Bethnal Green. The benefits officers haven’t got a clue and people get pushed around and nobody cares. But my job is just registering people, I cannot solve their problems. Sometimes people come who have gone six weeks without money, we have homeless people coming in here too and we try to feed them. These are human beings, some of these people had good jobs and now they are homeless. We can see the problem. We see a lot of people suffering. This is the East End and we are all human and we have to help each other. We have people who have used up their visits but they keep coming for the company and a cup of tea because they do not see anyone else and they are lonely. I love this food bank.”
Bushra Bakar, Legal Adviser
“Many clients are on benefits or homeless, so I can advise them and help with other issues like employment and debt management. I did my undergraduate degree in Law at London Metropolitan University. Public law and employment law are my specialities and now I am training to qualify. I’ve come across a number of clients who are rough sleepers without access to benefits, often because they are asylum seekers without legal rights. I assist a lot of people in need and it makes me realise just how many people out there need help.”
Father Javier, Parish Priest of St Catherine’s Roman Catholic Church
“This brings together the whole community under the umbrella of something that unites us all.”
Reverend Debbie Frazer, Rector of St. Mary & Holy Trinity Bow
“I am one of the founders of the Bow Food Bank. We did not want to restrict access to referrals from Department of Work & Pensions and General Practitioners, we wanted it to be unconditional so that people can come to us and say they need help. In the benefits system, people are treated with mistrust as if they were potential criminals, but I think they get more from being treated with dignity and respect. If people come here because they are in need of food, we let them know that they are welcome.”
Merlin, Most-beloved church dog
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Stories Of Shoreditch Old & New
Each Saturday, we shall be featuring one of Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND from the forthcoming book of his extraordinary cartography to 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
1. Iron Age Man establishes a track along what is now “OLD STREET”.
2. Christian Roman Soldiers worship at the source of the river Walbrook, now St Leonards.
3. Sir John de Soerditch rides against the French Spears alongside The Black Prince.
4. Jane Shore, a goldsmith’s daughter & lover of Edward IV dies in “a ditch of loathsome scent.”
5. “Barlow” the archer is given the dubious title “Duke of Shoreditch” by Henry VIII.
6. Christopher Marlowe murders the son of a Hog Lane innkeeper, he escapes prosecution.
7. Plague burials take place at “Holywell Mound” by the Priory of St John the Baptist at Holywell.
8. Queen Elizabeth I on passing by medieval St Leonards is “Pleased by its Bells.”
9. The sweet water of “The Holywell” is spoilt by manure heaps of local nursery gardens,
10. James Burbage’s sons Cuthbert & Richard dismantle “The Theatre” in two to four days & transport it to the South bank of the Thames where it is rebuilt as “The Globe”.
11. William Shakespeare enjoys a “bumper” at an inn on the site of the present “White Horse.”
12. Local Huguenot weavers riot for three days protesting against & burning “multi-shuttle looms”.
13. Thomas Fairchild, a gardener, donated £25 to St Leonards for an annual Whitsunday sermon titled “Wonderful Works of God in creation” or “On the certainty of resurrection of the dead proved by certain changes of the animal and vegetable parts of creation.”
14. Militia are called from the Tower to quell four thousand Shoreditch locals rioting against cheap Irish labour being used to build the new George Dance tower of St Leonards.
15. Large lumps of masonry fall onto the congregation during a service at the collapsing old St Leonards.
16. The Huguenot speciality “fish & chips” appear at Britain’s first fish & chip shop on Club Row.
17. The many murders & muggings at Holywell Mount lead to it being levelled.
18. Local theatres such as The Curtain sink to become “no more than sparring rooms.”
19. Brick Lane takes its name from local brickfields, occasional location of furtive criminality.
20. Visitors to James Fryer’s land at Friar’s Mount wrongly assume a monastery stood there.
21. Joe Lee, the local horsewhisperer, coaxes improved productivity from working donkeys.
22. “Resurrection Men,” notorious body snatchers pinch recent interred corpses from St Leonards, some coffins in the crypt are found to contain bricks instead of bodies,
23. Four thousand people are dispossessed as Bishopsgate Goods Yard replaces streets around Swan Lane & Leg Alley.
24. Mary Kelly’s funeral procession leaves St Leonards amidst huge crowds. The poor victim of Jack the Ripper is given a second funeral at her own catholic cemetery.
25. Oliver Twist is said to have resided in Shoreditch. Many other unfortunate children arrive each morning at The White St Child Slave Market seeking work.
26. So many unruly pavement-side street vendors populate Shoreditch High St that a regular uniformed Street Keeper is employed.
27. Horse drawn trams add to the general commotion bustle and smell of the High Street.
28. Cats meat sellers, watercress hawkers & dog breeders all cram into the Old Nichol’s filthy tenements.
29. Sir Arthur Arnold, head of the LCC main drainage committee is commemorated at Arnold Circus.
30. For decades the chalk horse on Eastern Counties Railway, Bishopsgate terminus is redrawn by unknown local artist.
31. Enthusiastic Anarchists hoping to bring political awareness to the Old Nichol proletariat through their Boundary St printing operation find the task “like tickling an elephant with a straw.”
32. Artist, Lord Leighton calls the interior of Holy Trinity, Old Nichol St, “The most beautiful in England.”
33. Arthur Harding’s memories of his slum boyhood, “van dragging” etc are recalled in “East End Underworld.”
34. Arthur Morrison pens his slum tale “Child of the Jago” following Reverend Jay’s invitation to the Old Nichol.
35. The chapel dedicated to Shakespeare on Holywell Lane is destroyed by a WWII bomb.
36. Syd’s Coffee Stall, now Hillary Caterers, is saved from destruction during an air raid as two parked buses shelter it from a bomb blast. Thomas Austen’s medieval chancel window is less fortunate.
37. Novelist Arthur Machen identifies a “leyline” running through the mystic ancient earthwork Arnold Circus.
38. King Edward VIII officially inaugurates Boundary Estate from a platform on Navarre St.
39. The Red Arrows pass over the bandstand en-route once more to the Queen’s Birthday.
40. Protestors eventually force the closure of Club Row animal market, once home to dogs, parrots, pigeons and the occasional lion cub.
41. Navarre St is used as a playground by children who carve their names into the brickwork.
42. Artist, Ronald Searle visits Club Row animal market to illustrate Kaye Webb’s “Looking at London.”
43. The resident Bengali flute player of Arnold Circus is often heard across the Boundary Estate on warm Summer evenings.
44. The IRA bomb which explodes on Bishopsgate disturbs the rats in Shoreditch who emerge in large numbers from the drains,
45. The great train robbers plan their notorious crime upstairs in The Ship & Blue Ball, Boundary St.
46. Jeremiah Rotherham demolishes the Shoreditch Music Hall for another warehouse.
47. Joan Rose‘s father proudly displays his fruit & vegetables on Calvert Avenue whilst she is sent to buy more bags at Gardners Market Sundriesmen (still trading today).
48. Every type of vacuum cleaner bag is sold by “Zammo from Grange Hill’s dad” at Shoreditch Domestics on Calvert Avenue.
49. The failed Suicide Bus Bomber is seen by security camera leaving the No 26 at Shoreditch.
50. Mono-recording virtuoso, Liam Watson strides past Shoreditch’s “Elvisly Yours” souvenir shop en-route to legendary Toe-rag recording studios in French Place.
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.
The Departure Of Ken Long
Tomorrow will be Ken Long‘s last day in Chrisp St Market where four generations of his family have traded in fruit and vegetables, so I hope as many readers as possible will take this last opportunity to pay him a visit, pick up supplies for the Easter weekend, and shake the hand of a legendary East End greengrocer.
Photographer Andrew Baker introduced me to his pal Kenny Long at Chrisp St Market in Poplar. Ken is an heroic greengrocer who always sets up his stall earlier than anyone else each day and whose family have been trading in this location through four generations, since before the current market was even built.
For the past thirty years, Ken has been setting up in the dawn, after he has been to the wholesale market to buy fresh produce, wheeling out the old wooden barrows and arranging his stall in the traditional manner with the vegetables to the right and the fruit to left. On his stall sit black and white photographs of those who preceded him, as a reminder of this long-standing family endeavour, which Ken has maintained through his daily ritual out of loving devotion to those who are dead and gone.
While we chatted, Ken popped across the square to place a few bets on the horses, just as he did every day, and our conversation was interrupted by long-standing customers coming to buy. Although Ken made a good living and his work kept him fit and wiry at sixty-one years old, I learnt from him that being a greengrocer is a way of life and a way of understanding the world, as much as it is a business – as much culture as it is commerce.
In Chrisp St Market, Ken Long was the overseer of time passing and the custodian of history.
“It all stems back to before the Second World War when my great-grandmother, Ellen Walton – old granny Walton they used to call her – she had a greengrocer’s shop in Violet Rd in the thirties. My great-grandfather was a merchant seaman and in those days you could bring anything home, and he brought my mum a monkey and they used to have the monkey swinging about in the shop.
When the shop got bombed during the War, they moved onto a stall in Chrisp St Market. Old granny Walton passed the business on to my grandmother, Nell Walton – her name is on my barrow – and from her it went to her son, Freddie Walton and his sister, my mum Joanie Long, worked on the stall fifty years.
In 1951, they moved into the Lansbury Market ( as it was then) on the newly-built Lansbury Estate and we’ve been here ever since. When Uncle Freddie passed away two weeks after his sixty-fifth birthday, my mum took over. By then, I was already working on the fruit stall. My dad, William Long, was a docker and he died when I was eight in 1965. He got killed in the docks. As a child I was up here all the time, I used to come up to my nan on a Saturday and I used to run around the market. I would stay with my nan on a Saturday night and my dad would come and pick me up on a Sunday morning and take me home.
Eventually, I took the stall over from my mum and the licence changed from my uncle into my name but – as far as I was concerned – as long as my mother worked here, she was in charge because I had to do what I was told. At first, I got involved with the vegetable end of the stall, which my aunt used to run with my uncle until she had to have her leg off and couldn’t do it no more. My uncle was going to rent it out but I overheard my mum talking about it and I said, ‘Don’t rent it out to no stranger, keep it in the family. I’ll try it for a couple of years and see how I go’ – and the rest is history. I was thirty-one when I started and this year it will be thirty years that I have been here.
When I started, my uncle let me have the vegetable end of the stall and work it for myself, and I gave him the rent to pay to the council. After about two years, he dropped down dead indoors so we shut the stall up for a week and I had to decide what I was going to do, and I decided to take it on. I had been up to the Spitalfields Market with uncle and seen what he bought and what he didn’t buy. There were four of us working here then – me, my mum, my daughter and a girl. You needed at least three then, but now trade is not what it used to be, so I get by on my own.
For a while now, my stall has been the longest-established here in the market. We’ve been here everyday, every week for as long as this market has existed. Traditionally, people bought their bread, their meat, and their fruit and veg for the weekend on a Friday. Everybody used to cook a roast dinner on a Sunday but there’s not a lot of people that do that anymore. We had customers queueing up from half past six – seven o’clock in the morning and we’d have a queue at either end of the stall. They’d buy their vegetables at one end and pay for them, and then go up to the other end and queue up to buy their fruit. My mum would be serving here, I’d have a girl serving there and I’d be serving in the middle. It was like that all the time, from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon. People who knew me would say, ‘Ken, you know what I have.’ Ten pounds of potatoes, a cabbage, a cauliflower, carrots, onions and parsnips – the whole lot for their roast dinner. Now you get customers who come on a Saturday and ask for two pounds of potatoes, a carrot and a parsnip just to get them by.
Working like I do is a dying trade, serving customers individually and weighing out fruit and veg. On the other stalls in this market and you’ll see ‘pound a bowl’ and ‘pound a bag’ – everything is pre-packed. I am a traditional greengrocer and, although I can get everything all year round now, I know when the seasons are and I know when to buy, and there’s times when I won’t buy certain things because it ain’t proper.
I known greengrocers who have worked in Roman Rd, Watney Market, Bethnal Green and Rathbone Market, packing up and nobody ever replaces them, whereas once upon a time it was family and people came in to the business, taking over from their mum or dad. That’s not happening now.
You don’t have to serve an apprenticeship, you just have to go the wholesale market with whoever you are going to take over from and you have to have some experience to know what you are selling. There’s ten different oranges I can buy, but I know to buy seedless Spanish navels because they are best oranges. Elsewhere in this market, you can buy cheaper oranges and people think it’s better value, but only because they do not understand what they are buying. The soft fruit I sell will ripen nicely, whereas much of the fruit you buy in a supermarket will not ripen until it rots because they select varieties to have a long shelf life.
You don’t always buy with your eyes. Most of my regular customers know me and they say, ‘They look lovely, what are they like?’ and I’ll say, ‘Don’t have them, have these.’ I’ve been doing this long enough to know which people will trust me. I look after my loyal customers.
I enjoy it. I’ve earned a good living. It’s been good to me and it’s been good to all the family over the years. Fifteen years ago, I said ‘When I’m fifty-five, I want to be out.’ That would have been after twenty-five years in the market. But I got to fifty-five and it was still a good living, but by then all my family who worked the stall were dead and gone, and I couldn’t walk away from it. I wouldn’t walk away from a floating ship and it was still is a living to me, but the main reason I carried on was because my conscience told me I could not walk away from it. I could not pack it in because of all the people who came before me. If they saw me walk away for no reason at all, I could see my mum giving me dirty looks, I could see Freddie turning in his grave and I could see my nan. So I thought, ‘No, I’ve got to stick it out.’
In the last couple of years, they have been refurbishing the market and everything is coming down for redevelopment, so I am going now. I’ve got two sheds round the corner which I put these stalls in every night, they’re coming down first before the work starts and that puts me out of a job. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m being pushed out but it suits me, I’m sixty-one this year. I have been trying to find reasons to go. They’ve offered me alternative accommodation but it won’t be in the vicinity. It only takes me fifteen minutes to pull all these stalls round every morning at present.
We’ve had these old barrows hired off Hiller Brothers since 1951 when we came into the market. I have always paid thirty-seven pounds sixty per month, it never goes up and they maintain them for me at no extra charge.
I’m doing my own thing here. Since my mum’s been gone, and my daughter’s been gone and the girl’s been gone, I did what I liked! As much as I was running the stall, doing the buying and sorting the money out, when they was here I was still ‘the boy.’ It was still – ‘Ken, make us a cup of tea!’ -‘Ken do this!’- ‘Ken do that!’ – ‘Ken, go round the shed and get some orders’ There was three women telling me what to do. It was lovely and I did it because I thought I was supposed to, so I didn’t mind.
I have been serving people I have served for thirty years but I have had new customers come along too. I like the variety. I like being outside. I prefer the winter to the summer, because I don’t want to be here in the summer I want to be somewhere else nice. The hot weather doesn’t help all this stuff, you have to careful what you buy and how much you buy – it makes the job a little but harder. In the winter, you can buy a little bit more because it will keep an extra day or two, and in the winter you sell an even amount of fruit and veg, whereas in the summer you don’t sell a lot of veg because people don’t eat so many hot dinners.
I enjoy the job but – if I am honest – nowadays if I had a shop, I’d be shut at one o’clock because that’s when I start packing up, by two o’clock I am closing down and by three o’clock I am gone. I like getting away in the afternoon. I like getting up in the morning. I like going to the New Spitalfields Market. I like the buzz up the market, buying and running around. Things change all the time with the seasons, so you are always looking around for something different.”
Ken arrives before anyone else to pull his old wooden barrows into the market
Ken sets up his stall in the dawn while the market is empty
Ken’s grandmother Nell Walton is remembered on the side of a barrow made in Wheler St, Spitalfields
Ken’s mother, Joanie Long
Nell Walton & Uncle Freddie
Ellen Walton, known as ‘Old Granny Walton’
Each day Ken enjoys a flutter on the horses
Ken welcomes a long-standing customer
Photographs copyright © Andrew Baker
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James Ince & Sons, Umbrella Makers
The factory of James Ince & Sons, the oldest established umbrella makers in the country, is one of the few places in London where you will not hear complaints about the rainy weather, because – while our moist climate is such a disappointment to the population in general – it has happily sustained generations of Inces for over two centuries now. If you walked down Whites Row in Spitalfields in 1824, you would have found William Ince making umbrellas and, six generations later, I was able to visit Richard Ince, still making umbrellas in the East End. Yet although the date of origin of the company is conservatively set at 1805, there was a William Inch, a tailor listed in Spitalfields in 1793, who may have been father to William Ince of Whites Row – which makes it credible to surmise that Inces have been making umbrellas since they first became popular at the end of the eighteenth century.
You might assume that the weight of so much history weighs heavily upon Richard Ince, but it is like water off a duck’s back to him, because he is simply too busy manufacturing umbrellas. Richard’s father and grandfather were managers with a large staff of employees, but Richard is one of only four workers at James Ince & Sons today, and he works alongside his colleagues as one of the team, cutting and stitching, personally supervising all the orders. Watching them at work, it was a glimpse of what William Ince’s workshop might have been like in Spitalfields in 1824, because – although synthetics and steel have replaced silk and whalebone, and all stitching is done by machine now – the essential design and manufacturing process of umbrellas remains the same.
Between these two workshops of William Ince in 1824 and Richard Ince in 2011, exists a majestic history, which might be best described as one of gracious expansion and then sudden contraction, in the manner of an umbrella itself. It was the necessity of silk that made Spitalfields the natural home for James Ince & Sons. The company prospered there during the expansion of London through the nineteenth century and the increase in colonial trade, especially to India and Burma. In 1837, they moved into larger premises in Brushfield St and, by 1857, filled a building on Bishopsgate too. In the twentieth century, workers at Inces’ factory in Spitalfields took cover in the basement during air raids, and then emerged to resume making military umbrellas for soldiers in the trenches during the First World War and canvas covers for guns during the Second World War. Luckily, the factory itself narrowly survived a flying bomb, permitting the company to enjoy post-war success, diversifying into angling umbrellas, golfing umbrellas, sun umbrellas and promotional umbrellas, even a ceremonial umbrella for a Nigerian Chief. But in the nineteen eighties, a change in tax law, meaning that umbrella makers could no longer be classed as self-employed, challenged the viability of the company, causing James Ince & Sons to shed most of the staff and move to smaller premises in Hackney.
This is some of the history that Richard Ince does not think about very much, whilst deeply engaged through every working hour with the elegant contrivance of making umbrellas. In the twenty-first century, James Ince & Sons fashion the umbrellas for Rubeus Hagrid and for Mary Poppins, surely the most famous brollies on the planet. A fact which permits Richard a small, yet justly deserved, smile of satisfaction as the proper outcome of more than two hundred years of umbrella making by seven generations of his family. A smile that in its quiet intensity reveals his passion for his calling. “My father didn’t want to do it,” he admitted with a grin of regret, “but I left school at seventeen and I felt my way in. I used to spend my Saturdays in Spitalfields, kicking cabbages around as footballs, and when we had the big tax problem, it taught me that I had to get involved.” This was how Richard oversaw the transformation of his company to become the lean operation it is today. “We are the only people who are prepared to look at making weird umbrellas, when they want strange ones for film and theatre.” he confessed with yet another modest smile, as if this indication of his expertise were a mere admission of amiable gullibility.
On the ground floor of his factory in Vyner St, is a long block where Richard unfurls the rolls of fabric and cuts the umbrella panels using a wooden pattern and a sharp knife. Then he carries the armful of pieces upstairs where they are sewn together before Job Forster takes them and does the “tipping,” consisting of fixing the “points” (which attach the cover to the ends of the ribs), sewing the cover to the frame and adding the tie which is used to furl the umbrella when not in use.
Job was making huge umbrellas, as used by the doormen to shepherd guests through the rain, and I watched as he clamped the bare metal frame to the bench, revolving it as he stitched the cover to each rib in turn, to complete the umbrella. Then came the moment when Job opened it up to scrutinise his handiwork. With a satisfying “thunk,” the black cover expanded like a giant bat stretching its wings taut and I was spellbound by the drama of the moment – because now I understood what it takes to make one, I was seeing an umbrella for the first time, thanks to James Ince & Sons (Umbrella Makers) Ltd.
Richard Ince, seventh generation umbrella maker, prepares to cut covers for brollies.
Job Forster sews the cover to the ribs of the umbrella.
James Ince, born 1816
James John Ince, born 1830
Samuel George Ince, born 1853
Ernest Edward Sears, born 1870
Wilfred Sears Ince, born 1894
Geoffrey Ince, born 1932
Richard Ince, “Prepare for a rainy day!”
New photographs copyright © Chris Hill-Scott
Archive photographs copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
Chris Kelly’s Columbia School Portraits
It is my pleasure to publish Chris Kelly‘s portraits of an entire class at Columbia Primary School, Columbia Rd, Bethnal Green. Distinguished by extraordinary presence and insight, these tender pictures taken twenty-three years ago in 1996 are the outcome of a unique collaboration between the photographer and the schoolchildren. Chris has been taking photographs for education and health services, and voluntary organisations in the East End for almost twenty years, and these astonishing timeless portraits illustrate just one aspect of the work of this fascinating photographer.
I like myself because I am smart and cool and my name is Rufus and Rufus means red one and I really like to play with my friends.
My name is Abdul. I am eight years old. I was born in 7.10.88 and I like trainers called keebok classic.
When I grow up I want to be a singer and travel around the world. My name is Jay and I am eight years old.
My name is Imran. I am eight years old. I like going to school. I like drawing. My sister Happy gives me sweets.
Hello my name is Salma and I was born in 1988. I am eight years old. I like to go to Bangladesh. At school I like Art. I go to Columbia Primary School. And my teachers name is Lucy.
I like myself because I am smart and cool. My name is Ibrahim. My age is eight years old.
My name is Jamal. I go to Columbia School and I am eight years old. I enjoy reading and art and the new book bags. I am special because there are no other people like me.
I’m eight. I like to play. My mummy loves me. My name is Shumin.
I am special because I am good at reading and maths. I am good at running. I am eight years old and I am year three. My address is London E2. My best friend is Rokib. My name is Kamal.
My name is Kamal Miah. I like chocolate cake with chocolate custard. I love computers at home. I learn at Columbia School. Before school I drink fizzy drink and I eat chips. My date of birth is 13.10.88. My best chocolate bar is Lion. My best colour is dark blue. I’m good at maths. Speling group is C.
I am eight years old. My name is Nazneen. I like doing maths and I like doing singing. I have three sisters. And I have lots of friends.
My name is Paplue. I like football and I like fried chicken because they give me chicken. I am eight.
My name is Rahima. I was born in October the eleventh. I’m eight years old. I go to Columbia School. I live in number thirty.
My name is Halil. I am eight years old. I like to play with my three game boys. I like to see funny films.
My name is Litha. I like chocolate. I was born in London. I am eight years old. I live in a flat. When I grow up I want to be a hairdresser.
My name is Robert. I am eight years old and I live in London E2. I like where I live because I have lots of friends to play with.
My name is Rajna. I’m good at running. I do writing at home. And I’m the middle sister.
I am eight years old. I go to school. I play in the playground and my name is Dale.
My name is Sadik. I’m eight years old. I am quite good at football. I practise with my uncle.
My name is Rokib, I am eight years old. I am special because I can read and write and I can do maths and I can be thoughtful and helpful.
My name is Shafia. I am eight years old. I have two sisters. My big sister is called Nazia and my baby sister is called Pinky.
My name is Shokar. I like kick boxing and swimming and I like football.
My name is Urmi and I like going to Ravenscroft Park. I have a black bob cut, browny skin and black eyes. I am eight years old.
My name is Wahidul. I am eight years old. My favourite prehistoric animals are dinosaurs and I like reading and science.
My name is Yousuf. I want to be a computer designer. If I want to be a computer designer I have to be an artist as well.
My name is Ferdous. I am eight years old. I go to Columbia School. My favourite thing is playing games. My date of birth is 10.12.88.
My name is Akthar. I like to go to Victoria Park. I am eight years old.
Hello my name is Fahmida. I am eight years old and I was born in 1989. I like to play skipping and Onit. I like going to school. In school I like Art.
I go to play out with my friends. I go to the shops with my mum. I go to my sisters new house. My name is Ashraf and I’m eight years old.
My name is Fateha. I go to school. I like art. I am eight years old. I am lucky that I’ve got a good art teacher.
Photographs copyright © Chris Kelly
Chris Kelly hopes to make contact with the subjects of these pictures again, now thirty years old, for the purpose of taking a new set of portraits. So, if you were one of these children, please get in touch with chriskellyphoto@blueyonder.co.uk
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