Hopping Photography
This selection of favourite Hop Pickers’ photographs is from the archive of Tower Hamlets Community Housing. Traditionally, this was the time when East Enders headed down to the Hop Farms, embracing the opportunity of a breath of country air and earning a few bob too.
Bill Brownlow, Margie Brownlow, Terry Brownlow & Kate Milchard, with Keith Brownlow & Kevin Locke in front, at Guinness’ Northland’s Farm at Bodiam, Sussex, in 1958. Guinness bought land at Bodiam in 1905 and eight hundred acres were devoted to hop growing at its peak.
Julie Mason, Ted Hart, Edward Hart & friends at Hoathleys Farm, Hook Green, near Lamberhurst, Kent
Lou Osbourn, Derek Protheroe & Kate Day at Goudhurst Farm
Margie Brownlow & Charlie Brownlow with Keith Brownlow, Kate Milchard & Terry Brownlow in front at Guinness’ Northland’s Farm at Bodiam, Sussex, in 1950
Mr & Mrs Gallagher with Kitty Adams & Jackie Gallagher from Westport St, Stepney, in the hop gardens at Pembles Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent in 1959
Jackie Harrop, Joan Day & George Rogers at Whitbread’s Farm, Beltring, Kent in 1949
Mag Day (on the left at the back) in the hop gardens with others at Highwood’s Farm, Collier St, in 1938
Pop Harrop at Whitbread’s Farm, Beltring, Kent in 1949
Sarah Watt, Mrs Hopkins, Steven Allen, Ann Allen, Tom, Albert Allen & Sally Watt in the hop gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Den Farm, Collier St, Kent in 1943
Harry Watt, Tom Shuffle, Mary Shuffle, Sally Watt, Julie Callagher, Ada Watt & Sarah Watt in the hop gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Den Farm, Collier St, Kent in the fifties
Harry Watt, Sally Watt, Sarah Watt holding Terry Ellames in the hop gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Den Farm, Collier St, Kent in 1957
Harry Ayres, a pole puller, in the hop gardens at Diamond Place Farm, Nettlestead, Kent
Emmie Rist, Theresa Webber, Kit Webber & Eileen Ayres in the hop gardens at Diamond Place Farm, Nettlestead, Kent
Kit Webber with her Aunt Mary, her Dad Sam Webber and her Mum, Emmie Ris,t in the hop gardens at Diamond Place Farm, Nettlestead, Kent
Harry Ayres with his wife Kit Webber in the hop gardens at Diamond Place Farm, Nettlestead, Kent.
Richard Pyburn, Mag Day, Patty Seach and Kitty Gray from Kirks Place, Limehouse, in the hop gardens at Highwoods Farm, Collier St, Kent
The Gorst and Webber families at Jack Thompsett’s Farm, Fowle Hall, Kent in the forties
Kitty Waters with sons Terry & John outside the huts at Pembles Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent in 1952
Mr & Mrs Gallagher from Westport St, Stepney, with their grandchildren in the hop gardens at Pembles Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent in 1958
Sybil Ogden, Doris Cossey, Danny Tyrrell & Sally Hawes near Yalding, Kent
John Doree, Alice Thomas, Celia Doree & Mavis Doree in the hop gardens near Cranbrook, Kent
Bill Thomas & his wife Annie, in the hop gardens near Cranbrook, Kent
The Castleman Family from Poplar hop picking in the twenties
Terry & Margie Brownlow at Guinness’ Northland’s Farm at Bodiam in Sussex in 1949
Alfie Raines, Johnny Raines, Charlie Cushway, Les Benjamin & Tommy Webber in the Hop Gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Farm at Fowl Hall near Paddock Wood in Kent
Lal Outram, Wag Outram & Mary Day on the common at Jack Thompsett’s Farm at Fowl Hall near Paddock Wood in Kent in 1955
Taken in September 1958 at Moat Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent. Sitting on the bin is Miss Whitby with Patrick Mahoney, young John Mahoney and Sheila Tarling (now Mahoney) – Sheila & Patrick were picking to save up for their engagement party in October
Maryann Lowry’s Nan, Maggie ,on the left with her Great-Grandmother, Maryann, in the check shirt in the hop gardens, c.1910
Having a rest in hop gardens at Whitbread’s Farm, Beltring, Kent in 1966. In the back row are Mary Brownlow, Sean Locke, Linda Locke, Kate Milchard, Chris Locke & Margie Brownlow with Kevin Locke and Terry Locke in front.
Margie Brownlow & her Mum Kate Milchard at Whitbreads Farm in Beltring, Kent in 1967. These huts were two stories high. The children playing outside are – Timmy Kaylor, Chrissy Locke, Terry Locke, Sean Locke, Linda Locke & Kevin Locke.
Chris Locke, Sally Brownlow, Linda Brownlow, Kate Milchard, Margie Brownlow, Terry Locke & Mary Brownlow at Whitbread’s Farm, Beltring, Kent in 1962
Johnno Mahoney, Superintendant of the Caretakers on the Bancroft Estate in Stepney, driving the “Mahoney Special” at Five Oak Green in 1947
The Clarkson family in the hop gardens in Staplehurst. Gladys Clarkson , Edith Clarkson, William Clarkson, Rose Clarkson & Henry Norris.
John Moore, Ross, Janet Ambler, Maureen Irish & Dennis Mortimer in 1950 at Luck’s Farm, East Peckham, Kent
Kate Fairclough, Mrs Callaghan, Mary Fairclough & Iris Fairclough at Moat Farm, Five Oak Green, Kent in 1972
A gang of Hoppers from Wapping outside the brick huts at Stilstead Farm, Tonbridge, Kent with Jim Tuck & John James in the back. In the middle row the first person on the left is unknown, but the others are Rose Tuck, holding Terry Tuck, Rose Tuck, Danny Tuck & Nell Jenkins. In the front are Alan Jenkins, Brian Tuck, Pat Tuck, Jean Tuck, Terry Taylor & Brian Taylor.
Nanny Barnes, Harriet Hefflin, “Minie” Mahoney & Patsy Mahoney at Ploggs Hall Farm
In the Hop Gardens at Jack Thompsett’s Farm at Fowl Hall, near Paddock Wood in Kent in the late forties. Alfie Raines, Edie Cooper, Margie Gorst & Lizzie Raines
The Day family from Kirks Place, Limehouse, at Highwoods Farm in Collier St, Kent in the fifties
Annie Smith, Bill Daniels, Pearl Brown & Nell Daniels waiting for the measurer in the Hop Garden at Hoathley’s Farm, Hook Green, Kent
On the common outside the huts at at Hoathley’s Farm, Hook Green, Kent – you can see the oasthouses in the distance. Rita Daniels, Colleen Brown, Maureen Brown, Marie Brown, Billy Daniels, Gerald Brown & Teddy Hart , with Sylvie Mason & Pearlie Brown standing.
The Outram family from Arbour Sq outside their huts at Hubbles Farm, Hunton, Kent. Unusually these were detached huts but, like all the others, they made of corrugated tin and all had one small window – simply basic rooms, roughly eleven feet square
Janis Randall being held by her mother Joyce Lee andalongside her is her father, Alfred Lee in a hop garden, near Faversham in September 1950
David & Vivian Lee sitting on a log on the common outside Nissen huts used to house hop pickers
Gerald Brown, Billy Daniels & Dennis Woodham in the hop gardens at Gatehouse Farm near Brenchley, Kent, in the fifties
Nelly Jones from St Paul’s Way with Eileen Mahoney, and in the background is Eileen’s mum, “Minie” Mahoney. Taken in the fifties in the Hop Gardens at Ploggs Hall Farm, between Paddock Wood and Five Oak Green.
At Jack Thompsett’s Farm at Fowl Hall, near Paddock Wood in Kent
Ploggs Hall Farm Ladies Football Team. Back Row – Fred Archer, Lil Callaghan, Harriet Jones, Unknown, Unknown, Nanny Barnes, Liz Weeks, Harriet Hefflin, Johnno Mahoney. Front Row – Doris Hurst Eileen Mahoney & Nellie Jones
John Moore, Ross, Janet Ambler, Maureen Irish & Dennis Mortimer in 1950 at Luck’s Farm, East Peckham, Kent
The Outram and Pyburn families outside a Kent pub in 1957, showing clockwise Kitty Tyrrell, Mary Pyburn, Charlie Protheroe, Rene Protheroe, Wag Outram, Derek Protheroe in the pram, Annie Lazel, Tom Pyburn, Bill Dignum & Nancy Wright.
Sally Watt’s Hop Picker’s account book from Jack Thompsett’s Den Farm, Collier St, Kent in the fifties
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At William Gee Ltd
Speaking as a lifelong connoisseur of quality haberdashery, let me say that if you are in need of a button or a reel of thread, there is no finer place to go than William Gee Ltd at 520 Kingsland Rd. For the haberdashery lover, even the windows at William Gee set the pulse racing with their ingenious displays of words contrived from zips – yet it was my privilege recently to explore behind the scenes at this glamorous theatre of smallwares, trimmings, threads, buttons and zippers, visiting the mysterious warren of storerooms at the rear of the shop, where I met the self-respecting guardians of this beloved Dalston institution that styles itself as “trimmings for all trades.”
My guide was Jeffrey Graham, maestro of the proud company boasting London’s largest selection of zip fasteners. He led me up an old brown lino-covered staircase between walls panelled in wood-effect formica to the locked, dusty upper room lined with happy photos of works’ outings and jamborees of long ago. Here Jeffrey brought the title deed to the property dating from the sixteenth century when this was Henry VIII’s land – Henry was the king that the Kingsland Rd refers to – and he had stables here for hunting when there was still forest, recalled today only in the name of Forest Rd. Then, once we had established this greater chronological perspective, Jeffrey brought out the tiny sepia photograph of William Goldstein that illustrates where the haberdashery business began.
“William Goldstein started in 1906 with two pounds in the kitty selling buttons and trimmings, and he changed the company name to William Gee. This was across the road where Albert’s Cafe is now, but after several years he needed larger premises and moved into the current building. He had two sons, Alfred & Sidney, and I knew both of them. Alfred died in 1970 and Sidney worked until he was eighty-five, and died four or five years ago. They grew the business and made it one of the largest of its type in the country, at a time when there was a large textile industry in the East End – which was full of clothing factories until a few years ago.
In the middle of the last century, there were more than eighty people working here. I remember coming in as a child and there were twelve ladies who all had their own button-making machines for covering buttons and they’d all be sitting there jabbering away making buttons, and some had machines at home and even carried on making them there too. When I was twelve or fourteen, I did a holiday job helping out and going out on deliveries with the drivers, so I saw a lot of the places we delivered to. My impression was that everything was bustling, everyone was busy, no-one had any patience and everyone knew everyone.
My father, David Graham, had a similar business at 77 Commercial St. He served all the factories in the little streets around Spitalfields and my grandfather had a haberdashery shop before him, on Brick Lane, M.Courts – it was still there in name until very recently. In the early sixties, the two businesses merged and my father became managing director of William Gee and we were supplying manufacturing companies that made uniforms and corporatewear, brideswear companies, hospitals, sportswear companies, hatters in Luton, – anyone really.We were doing a wholesale business in bulk that was very competitive.
The heyday was in the sixties through into the eighties, before manufacturers began to have their clothes made by cheaper labour in Eastern Europe, North Africa, or the Far East where much of the clothing is made today. It closed many factories and suppliers, they could not compete. It was no accident that people talk about “sweatshops,” because there wasn’t legislation to control how they should be organised then, but after legislation was enforced employers could not compete with overseas competitors.
It became a thing that you were delivering to shippers rather than factories, and then the types of customers became smaller and more varied – from engineers and printers, to film and theatre companies like the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera, and lots of designers including, Gareth Pugh, Alexander McQueen Matthew Williamson, Vivienne Westwood, Caroline Charles and Old Town. What has come instead is a cottage industry, where individual designers are setting up and making a business out of it, and one of the largest sources of sales in recent years have been the colleges for fashion, textiles and art departments. But there are so many of them now that I wonder what will all the students do afterwards?”
Leaving this question to resolve itself we set out to visit the departments. First the button department which fills the shop next door, where buttonmaker, Janet Vanderpeer, presides over neat shelves stacked with rare ancient buttons from companies that closed years ago. Here I found her secreted behind a curtain in a cosy den, placidly making fabric-covered buttons at a press. Did she like it? A nod to the affirmative. How long had she been doing it? “A good while.” And without missing a beat she kept the buttons coming.
From here, we passed behind the shop to the three storey warehouse where the comprehensive supply of zip fasteners are kept and tended by their own designated keeper “You might think a zip is just zip,” said Jeffrey, rolling his eyes and gesturing to the lines of shelves. Then we stepped out into Forest Close whence the works’ coach parties departed in the nineteen fifties and crossed the road to the large warehouse where Janet’s brother David Vanderpeer, despatch manager, who joined the company thirty years ago at the age of sixteen, inhabits his own cosy den complete with microwave and ceramic leopard.
All fourteen staff at William Gee today have been there at least ten years and there is a sense of quiet mutual understanding which enables everything to run smoothly. Jeffrey told me a man will come in to say that his grandmother sent him here to buy buttons as a child and then ten minutes later another senior gentleman will come in to say the same thing. Yet in this appealingly utilitarian shop, that appears sublimely unaffected by any modern intervention, whoever comes through the door to stand between the two long counters is met with respect and patience. Even the old lady who did a high kick to place her ankle on the counter, when I was there, in order to display the kind of elastic she required was met with unblinking courtesy. And when Jeffrey Graham informed me authoratively, “The styles of clothing may have changed but the basic components are the same whatever the fashion.” I could hardly disagree.
William Goldstein’s haberdashery shop in 1906, that became William Gee.
A leaving party for Ivy Brandon in the seventies, with David Graham on the far right and Sidney Gee on the far left.
Sidney Gee & David Graham celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary in 1981
The warehouse round the corner in Forest Rd.
Princess Diana in a coat with lining supplied by William Gee, 1986.
Jeffrey Graham, Managing Director of William Gee.
Janet Vanderpeer, Buttonmaker.
David Vanderpeer, Despatch Manager.
S. R. Badmin In Wapping
Today I present another extract from my new book EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century to be published by Spitalfields Life Books in October. Click here to preorder your copy
Wapping Pier Head, 1935
In the second half of the last century, the meticulously rendered paintings of Stanley Roy Badmin (1906–89) achieved universal recognition among millions who may not have known his name but were familiar with his ubiquitous style. His work appeared on the covers of such popular publications as Readers’ Digest and Radio Times, in books such as the Puffin Picture Book of Village & Town, 1939, and the Ladybird Book of Trees, 1963 – as well as gracing Christmas cards published by Royle on both sides of the Atlantic.
Born in Sydenham to a family that originated in Somerset, Stanley often visited his grandfather who was a cabinet maker in the Mendips and his love for the English countryside remained a central theme throughout his artistic life. An interest in waterways, rivers, canals and bridges was part of Stanley’s fascination with the rural landscape and it was perhaps this which drew him to paint Wapping Pier Head. Certainly, there is very little in the picture to indicate that this is an urban scene. Remarkably in Wapping, where after the closure of the London Docks and their subsequent redevelopment very little remains of the past, Stanley’s view of Wapping Pier Head survives unaltered today.
At Camberwell Art School in 1922, Thomas Derrick encouraged Stanley to paint familiar subjects. “He gave me a good talking to about painting things around me and not ladies in crinolines,” recalled Stanley. Winning a place at the Royal College of Art, Stanley switched from painting to design with the blessing of William Rothenstein.
Graduating in 1927, he soon won commissions for magazine illustrations which were followed by a string of books, beginning with Highways & Byways in Essex in 1937. Additionally, Stanley travelled around the country, working for the Pilgrim Trust from 1940 as part of its Recording Britain scheme, dedicated to documenting views and buildings that were at risk, either from neglect, demolition or enemy bombs.
Postwar, Stanley’s lyrical vision of the rural English landscape caught the national imagination. Yet it avoided the nostalgic romanticism of his contemporaries through a concern with the reality of agricultural life as expressed in its working detail, farm machinery and infrastructure.
Above all, Stanley’s paintings confront the viewer with wonder at the astonishing minutiae of the world, sometimes rendering every twig and leaf in the sharp focus of a dream, and inviting us to peer into his pictures as if we are looking through a window.
Wapping Pier Head reproduced courtesy of Museum of London
The Estate of SR Badmin is represented by Chris Beetles Gallery
Take a look at some of the other artists featured in East End Vernacular
Mr Pussy’s Chair
Mid-afternoon in Spitalfields, Mr Pussy snoozes
Is that an old fur hat on that chair in the corner? You would be forgiven for making such a simple mistake, but in fact it is my old cat, Mr Pussy, slumbering the hours away in the armchair that is his ultimate home, the place where I first laid him down as a tiny kitten and the place where he has spent more hours of his life than anywhere else – even if it has now moved over two hundred miles from one end of the country to the other. It is Mr Pussy’s chair.
My mother bought this chair in 1963. She had been married five years and had a three year old child, and she was still struggling to furnish our house. She was patient, doing without and waiting until the opportunity arose to acquire suitable things. She had very little money to spend but she wanted furniture that would last, and the passage of time has proved she chose wisely. I think she bought this chair in a sale and, although I do not know if it can truly be memory on my part, I see her searching among the cut-price furniture in the shop and filling with delight to discover this handsome Queen Anne style wingchair that was within her budget.
It was a deep green velvet then and one of my earliest memories is of standing upon the seat, safe between the wings of the chair, and reaching up vainly attempting to grasp the top. I yearned for the day when I would be tall enough to reach it, for then I should grown up beyond my feeble toddler years. The chair seemed huge to me and I could climb beneath it comfortably, much to my father’s frustration when he was sitting in it on Saturday afternoons and attempting to take note of the football results from the television, in order to complete his pools form and discover if he had become wealthy.
He never became wealthy yet he never gave up hope of winning either, sitting in this chair and filling in the football scores every Saturday, for year after year, until he died. Just a few weeks after his funeral, I bought a small black kitten for my mother as a means to ameliorate her grief and the tiny creature slept curled up in the corner of the armchair, seeking security in its wide embrace. It was his earliest nest. By now the green velvet had faded to a golden brown and the cushion has disintegrated, so that if a stranger were to visit and sit down quickly upon it they would fall right through the seat. Yet this did not matter too much to us, because we kept the chair exclusively for the use of the cat who did not weigh very much.
Eventually, to rejuvenate the chair, we had a new seat cushion made and a loose fabric cover of William Morris’ Willow Leaves pattern, which is still serviceable more than ten years later. Once my mother began to lose her faculties in her final years, I often sat her in it that she might benefit from its protection, when her balance failed her, and not fall off onto the floor as she did from chairs without wings. After she died, it became the cat’s sole preserve and it still delights me to see him there in the chair, evoking earlier days. It is almost the last piece of furniture I have from my childhood home and, although I do not choose to sit in it much myself, I keep it because I can still see my father sitting there doing his football pools or my mother perched to read the Sunday supplement.
One day, I mean to have the armchair reupholstered in its original deep green velvet but until then, by his presence, Mr Pussy keeps the chair and the memories that it carries alive. I realise that Mr Pussy is keeping the chair warm for me and I am grateful to him for this service that he offers so readily.
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The Cats of Spitalfields (Part One)
Nathaniel Kornbluth, Artist
Today I present another extract from my new book EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century to be published by Spitalfields Life Books in October. Click here to preorder your copy
Butchers’ Row, Aldgate, 1934
This view was a familiar one for Nathaniel Kornbluth (1914–97) because he spent his working life running the family menswear business at 56 Whitechapel High St, just a few hundred yards away. As a child of Polish immigrants, Nathaniel found his aspirations to an artistic career were discouraged, yet he proved himself a loyal son by devoting himself to the wholesale clothing trade by day, while taking evening classes in printmaking at night.
Nathaniel learnt the techniques of etching at classes at Hackney Technical School in the thirties and then came under the influence of some of the most important printmakers of his time at the Central School of Arts & Crafts in the forties.
While Nathaniel’s choice of medium and subject matter display an awareness of Whistler, a distinctly twentieth century expressionist influence may also be perceived in the moody atmosphere that prevails. His prints reveal an artist of superlative technical accomplishment, with a rigorous quality of draftsmanship, a commanding sense of space and a subtle appreciation of the grim utilitarian beauty of the working city, especially the riverside.
During the thirties, Nathaniel first exhibited his etchings at the East End Academy at the Whitechapel Gallery, which was situated directly across the road from his family business. Subsequently, his prints were purchased for major collections both nationally and internationally, and he was holding solo exhibitions of new work until the nineteen-eighties.
Although Nathaniel sought subject matter all over the capital, his intricately detailed representations of the London Docks in particular survive as an invaluable record of a lost industry.
Limehouse Cut, 1935-6
Lovell’s Wharf, Greenwich, 1932
Regent’s Canal, Stepney, 1934
Junk Shop, Limehouse, 1935
Butcher’s Row & Limehouse Cut courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives
Take a look at some of the other artists featured in East End Vernacular
Wolfgang Suschitzky, Photographer
As a complement to his recent feature on the work of photographer Edith Tudor-Hart, Contributing Writer Mark Richards explores the photography of her brother, Wolfgang Suschitzky
Bethnal Green, 1937
I had the privilege of meeting the late Wolfgang Suschitzky (1912-2016) three times – once at an exhibition opening, once at a book signing and, most recently, when he agreed to a portrait session and interview last year. His apartment was like a treasure-trove with walls covered in photographs, prints and works of art, providing an evocative glimpse into the mind of an artist who, over seven decades, produced some of the most memorable photographs of his generation.
Wolf was kind enough to share some insights into his photographic career and the context of many of his photographs – in particular his famous Charing Cross Series. Born in Austria in 1912, Wolf grew up in the same environment as his his older sister Edith Tudor-Hart. His father, Wilhelm Suschitzky, ran a Socialist bookshop in Vienna and was of Jewish origin, but had renounced his faith and become an atheist. It is clear from his work, and from speaking to him, that Wolf was a humanist who had remarkable empathy with his subjects, both human and animal. His humanity is the golden thread which links all of his photographs together.
I know of many attempts to categorise Wolf’s photography but the breadth of his work defies any simple description. For me, what is most striking about Wolf as a photographer was his versatility and his ability to apply himself to many different situations. Above all, Wolf was an opportunist with an outstanding eye for what works visually and how to execute it technically. He was in turn a documentary photographer, a portrait photographer, a photographer of animals and an accomplished cinematographer. Whichever mode he was in, his photographs reveal an humane clarity of vision born out of one common characteristic, which was his patience. When I asked him what he thought was the most important element of any photograph, his reply was simple – he said it was timing. Choosing when to press the button and capture a moment was the key to many of his most striking images.
Wolf had originally planned to be a Zoologist but his interest in photography was encouraged by his sister, Edith, who had studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau and eventually he enrolled there too. When I asked him about the Bauhaus and what influence it had on his photography he was quite dismissive, saying that all they taught him was how to make a good print. The course was technical and does not seem to have been a great deal of help when it came to the aesthetics of photography and what makes a great photograph. For that, he had to look to other influences such as Henry Cartier-Bresson, Willy Ronis and the emerging Bill Brandt.
Yet the technical rigour instilled into him at the Bauhaus laid the foundation on which much of his future success as a photographer was built. You can have the best eye in the world for composition, but it is of little use if you cannot take a good photograph and print it properly. He told me that he always made his own prints and much of his creative interpretation came in the darkroom. He had remarkable skills that are now all but lost in this age of digital photography.
Wolf left Austria in 1934 and stayed briefly in London before moving to Amsterdam with his new wife. After this short marriage, his wife left him and he returned to London in 1935. He later attributed his existencel to the failure of that marriage, but for their separation he might not have survived the war.
His modesty, patience and sensitivity come through in much of his work. They are evidenced by not trying to impose himself on the subjects but allowing them to flow through his lense to the printed image. His archive includes an astonishing range of work from projects he initiated as well as seventy years of commissioned photography.
One of Wolf’s most well-known set of photographs is his Charing Cross Series, taken early in his career. As a foreigner in London, he was able to see the city through fresh eyes and took many photographs of everyday life in the capital, which as – a new arrival – seemed far from normal to him. As photographers, we all recognise the sense of excitement in exploring a new city and photographing subjects which the locals perceive to be unremarkable.
Wolf’s excitement and interest in his new environment comes through in this series. While many of the photographs possess technical excellence, much of the significance of the series has been acquired in the decades that have passed since the photographs were first taken. He was a struggling photographer at the time, so much of what he took in his early years was opportunistic, aimed at making some money – often with limited success. Originally, Wolf wanted to produce a book of his Charing Cross photographs but the cost was prohibitive and he could not find anyone to publish it.
As London was overtaken by war, Wolf’s adopted city was changed forever. During those dark times, he captured some remarkable images of London at the height of the Blitz. Yet, even when photographing these subjects, Wolf managed to preserve his distinctive style and stand out from those that merely sought to capture scenes for the record.
Throughout his life, Wolf maintained his interest in Zoology and took many remarkable photographs at London Zoo, where he enjoyed interacting with animals enormously. Wolf considered these photographs to be portraits in the proper sense of the word and they took a huge amount of patience to execute.
Wolf had a particular talent for taking portraits. His modesty, good nature and empathy enabled him to put his subjects at ease. When I asked him why he moved into portraiture, his answer was simple – he did it to bolster his income. Yet his relationship with portraiture was clearly much more than that because it included street portraits for which he earned no fee. Wolf treated both the famous and those who were not famous on an equal footing, always striving to preserve the dignity of his subjects.
Much like his sister, Wolf was committed to social justice and some of his photographs revealed the poverty of Londoners, especially children. His photograph of two children playing with a matchbox has many similarities to the famous Bakery Window by Edith Tudor-Hart. However, Wolf’s photograph was not staged but taken as a candid snapshot of deprivation in the East End.
In addition to his ability to portray people and animals, Wolf also possessed an impressive ability to capture the atmosphere of the urban environment, as you can see in the pictures below. Yet I cannot show the entire range of Wolfgang Suschitzky’s work here, I have not even touched on his work as a cinematographer. Out of a number of books available, the most recent is Seven Decades of Photography published by Synema, which I highly recommended.
The fact that these photographs were all taken using film, with no preview facility and only a limited number of available frames, makes Wolf’s achievement all the more remarkable.
The Matchbox, Stepney, 1936
Charing Cross Road, 1937
Man outside Foyles, 1936
This celebrated photograph of Foyles’ bookshop appears staged but, in fact, is a classic street photograph. Wolf waited patiently across the road for his subject to appear. He told me that he took the photograph speculatively, on the basis that Foyles might be interested in buying it for advertising, but when he presented it to them it was rejected as being of insufficient interest – a decision which seems remarkable in retrospect.
Charing Cross Rd, 1937
Shoe Shine, Charing Cross Rd, 1937
Wolf told me that this was a Soho gangster who was not pleased at having his photograph taken, but the woman in the photograph seemed quite flattered and posed for the camera. It is a striking social contrast between the well-dressed gangster and the man shining his shoes.
Milkman, Charing Cross Rd, 1935
Paving Charing Cross Rd, 1936
Even as late as 1936, they were using wooden blocks covered with tar to pave roads even though the number of horses in London had reduced drastically. The blocks were to absorb the noise from horses’ hooves and soften the impact for them.
St Paul’s Cathedral through the window of a bombed-out building, 1942
View east from St Paul’s Cathedral, 1942
War time pig-sty, 1942
Guy the Gorilla, London Zoo, 1958
Wolf described this remarkable photograph of Guy the Gorilla to me as being the best picture he ever took. The picture was taken after Wolf persuaded the zoo keeper to allow him to poke his camera through the bars of Guy’s cage, something that would be impossible today. In the resulting image, Guy looks both sentient and resigned to his fate. A magnificent creature imprisoned in a small cage at the will of humankind. The photograph, which was published widely and used by Virginia McKenna in one of her anti-zoo books, epitomises our relationship with animals and how they are often reduced to a mere commodity.
Leopard, London Zoo, 1958
Londoner, 1935
H.G. Wells with his Modern Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1939
Portrait, Trinidad, 1960
Sean O’Casey, 1958
Oldham, 1947
This photograph was taken out of the window of a pub where Wolf was staying for the night. It has a remarkable tonal range only possible through his skills in the darkroom, and captures the day after the tram tracks were removed and covered with tarmac.
Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, 1934
Embankment, 1947
The Thames, 1952
Wolf Suschitzky, aged 104, at his flat in Maida Vale – taken by Mark Richards using Ilford XP2 film
Photographs copyright © Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky
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The Old South Bank
Contributing writer, Gillian Tindall is currently celebrating forty years since the publication of her first foray into the history of cities, The Fields Beneath, and it is my pleasure to publish this missive from Gillian regarding that unknown land on the other side of the Thames known as the ‘South Bank.’
Lion Brewery and the Shot Tower by William Whiffin c1900
Many years of research and writing have taught me that when people survey a densely packed townscape, often with glassy towers rising above sooty older buildings, they love knowing that this same space of land was once a meadow occupied by cows, or an orchard, or yet the bank of a stream full of fish. What is not always so readily perceived is that, over time, one acre of London soil may have had many different incarnations.
Hundreds of years ago, the long stretch of the South Bank, all the way from London Bridge and Borough Market to Lambeth Bridge and the Archbishops’ Palace was a riverbank of bull-rushes and waterbirds’ nests, that had been built up with mud to try to keep the Thames out of the low-lying lands behind. A section at the eastern end had a proper wall constructed earlier than anywhere else along the Thames – the old name Bankside, dating from the thirteenth century, indicates this. Yet attempts to create a permanent causeway to keep the waters at bay were only partially successful and, further west, most of Lambeth remained a marsh into the eighteenth century. Occasional floods invaded buildings all along the riverfront until late-Victorian embankment and drainage got the better of the situation.
None of this stopped the citizens of London and its outlying parishes from making the most of their southern shore. In Elizabeth I’s reign, there was already a row of waterfront inns and places of entertainment stretching as far as where the Oxo tower stands today, just before the river takes a big curve southwards at Waterloo Bridge. Houses with gardens were built too, favoured by those who wanted to live outside the City jurisdiction, and some of these were given elegant new fronts in the time of Queen Anne.
Wharves were already creeping up river from the Pool of London to take over this flowery suburb then. Timber, stone and coal, all heavy loads that could only be carried in any quantity by water in the days of unmade roads, arrived via the Thames estuary and were off-loaded up-river of London Bridge. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution was sweeping through England and sending more and more of its products to London, the river front all the way to Lambeth was effectively privatised, partitioned among wharf-owners, importers and traders. By the twentieth century, there were over fifty privately owned wharves between London and Lambeth Bridges, many of them occupying one-time gardens.
In those days, well-to-do merchants did not live far from the source of their income and the tradition of a big, elegant house next to the works was still maintained. Just one of these survives, beside the Globe Theatre on a preserved stretch of old cobbled Bankside, with two smaller, rebuilt ones alongside. Another old house, even grander, stood till the fifties a little further along at Honduras Wharf – past the Bankside Power Station that became Tate Modern – approximately where the utilitarian Founder’s Arms pub is today. The house’s fine doorway and beautiful staircase were documented in the Southwark volume of the Survey of London, which was published after the war. Yet, in the destructive atmosphere of post-war planning, this did not stop it from being swept away for `improvements.’
The wharf buildings that hemmed in these elegant houses for two hundred years have gone now too as if they had never been. Fortunately, the desert of concrete blocks with a road in front that the planners envisaged for this stretch of the river did not get built. Instead, the idea of a public walkway to join up with Lambeth, where the Festival of Britain was held in 1951, gained more and more support. Yet the public were slow to realise what a wonderful present they had been given in a promenade with unimpeded river views that had been denied to their ancestors for centuries. Even twenty years ago, when the walkway had been completed – but had not yet been discovered by the café-owners, strollers, foreign tourists, exhibition-viewers, skate-boarders, performers and all the others who now throng it – I used to walk there alone and wonder why more did not know of it. Beware what you wish for!
On the one-time site of the Festival of Britain, the transformation over the decades has been even greater. I am one of that diminishing generation who remember visiting the Festival in childhood. In what was still the period of post-war austerity and rationing, it seemed to me be a fairy-tale of colour, lights, and a promise of a new time to come – especially when I was taken to a restaurant overlooking the river and saw people dancing at night in an open square. Goodness how foreign and exciting!
In reality, the Festival had been a contentious venture, crammed between Waterloo Bridge, Waterloo Station and Blackfriars Rd, with the railway line from Hungerford Bridge crossing over it. The whole site was summarily cleared in order to build transient exhibition pavilions, the Dome of Discovery and one permanent structure – the Festival Hall. The only old building that was not swept away was the Shot Tower, an elegantly tapering tall brick chimney built for dropping globules of lead down into cold water. Disused, it was done up for the Festival with glass bubbles at its top. I loved it for its mysteriousness and was very sorry – as were many people – when it was destroyed the following year in the interests of modernity. It stood next to the Festival Hall, in the space now occupied by the unsatisfactory Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery. A tree is said to have been planted in its memory, but I have never been able to find it.
The road that runs past this line of buildings and under Hungerford Bridge, with the late-fifties Shell Centre a little further along on the other side, is still called ‘Belvedere Rd,’ a name that dates from long before the area’s wharf-and-industry time. It was christened in the eighteenth century after a gentleman’s house called the ‘Belvedere’ standing by the river in its own garden. Nearby there was also `Cuper’s Garden,’ dating from the previous century, which by-and-by was opened to the public and, acquiring a raffish reputation, became known as `Cupid’s Gardens.’ Similarly, there was a `Temple of Flora’ and `Apollo Gardens.’ Evidently, Greek names were felt to bestow a picturesque quality on places of dubious encounter.
All the sinful, pretty gardens had disappeared by the mid-Victorian era. Waterloo Bridge Rd obliterated Cuper’s, which became a wine depot and then a vinegar works before in was obliterated. On the site of Belvedere House, the huge, rather elegant Lion Brewery rose, with a locally manufactured Coade Stone lion decorating the top of its classical façade. The brewery survived till the Festival swept it away to build the Festival Hall. Yet a few other time-tested buildings lasted till after the war. Numbers 55 and 59 Belvedere Rd had elegant porches and wrought iron gates that survived even after their one-time gardens had disappeared under wharfs and storage sheds.
I feel an curious personal link to No 59, since it became the fictional location for a set of characters derived from my Anglo-Irish ancestry. In 1946, my father’s sister, Monica Tindall, published her only novel, The Late Mrs Prioleau, which was based on the last two generations of our shared relatives. Although the plot, revolving around an ill-omened marriage in 1900, was invented, Monica placed this unhappy couple in 59 Belvedere Rd which she had visited during the Second World War when it was a hostel for women war-workers.
“It must have been a fine house in its time, and a pretty house too, with its wide doorway and rows of symmetrical windows. The [water] tank covered what must once have been a tiny lawn, and the stanchions of window boxes still protruded from the sooty walls, and round the corner in the back peered a discouraged tree that might once have been a lilac… Over the baffle wall against the door, I could just see the fanlight… Its centre was a fluted plaster shell with delicate curves and the first floor window above repeated the motif. … I pitied that bride who came fresh from her Irish home with its trees and clean sunshine to live there with an unloved husband.”
Buildings which furnish the settings of entire lives can vanish so completely, along with all their memories, that it is cheering when one finds an afterlife in a book, however obscure. Bricks and concrete are destroyed as if they had never been but sometimes literature lasts longer. Even if the old South Bank of marshes, of pleasure gardens, of gentleman’s houses, of breweries and of lead-works, is utterly gone, The Late Mrs Prioleau was reissued by Dean Street Press earlier this year.
St Mary Overy’s Dock, London Bridge, photographed by Henry Dixon for the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London, 1881 (courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute)
Bankside in the eighteen-twenties, some of the houses still dating from Tudor times
49 Bankside (the subject of Gillian’s book The House on the River Bank) in 1900 with the chimney of the earlier power station in the background
49 Bankside with the Bankside Power Station beyond, photographed by Richard Lansdown in 2004
The Shell Centre being built in the late fifties by Charlotte Halliday (courtesy of the artist)
The Belvedere in the early eighteenth century (courtesy of Lambeth Borough Archives)
The Lion Brewery, mid-nineteenth century measured drawing
59 Belvedere Rd, 1946 (courtesy of Lambeth Borough Archives)
1900 map of the area that later became the Festival of Britain. The half-moon shape of the back of 59 Belvedere Rd, with the house in front and assorted sheds behind, is visible half way between Waterloo Bridge Road and Hungerford railway bridge, mid-way between the Lead Works and the Lion Brewery.
Gillian Tindall’s The Tunnel through Time, A new route for an old journey is out as a Vintage paperback edition this September and The House by the Thames is available in paperback from Pimlico
