Patrick Baty’s East End Projects
Upon the publication of his definitive work, The Anatomy of Colour, Patrick Baty, acknowledged authority on historical paint, pigments and papers looks back on cherished East End projects
The bandstand at Arnold Circus is painted a handsome Brunswick Green
Although I have probably only worked on a dozen buildings in the whole of the East End, these have been amongst the finest and most interesting of their kind, ranging from the relatively humble to the magnificent. Yet I did have an ancestor, Timothy Bevan, who lived at the junction of what is now Mare St and Paragon Rd, and, when I gave a talk to the Hackney Society, a local historian recognised me from an eighteenth century portrait of my great great-great-great-great grandpa. A memory that still causes the hairs to rise on the back of my neck!
When the Market Café in Fournier St, favourite eating place of Gilbert & George, closed and the premises were converted into a shop I was asked for advice on the colours – both interior and exterior. Over the years, I had already helped the owners of at least three other houses in the same street, including the Rectory of Christ Church. By definition, these were all variants on a theme with many of the same suggestions being made. Usually, the information is well received, but sometimes it is a losing battle because people often have their own idea of what eighteenth century decoration looks like and, when faced with the early colour palette, prefer the artificial reality of ‘Copper-Kettledom.’
I am delighted to say that ‘Red’ Mason, the project architect on the restoration of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s magnificent Christ Church did more than listen. He asked me to carry out a full analysis of the painted surfaces within the church and then insisted that the original scheme was reinstated. We had to use a good deal of common sense too, as there were technical issues that were not faced by the early painters. However, this aspect is well understood, because so rarely does one use ‘authentic’ materials and I am not a believer in the so-called ‘traditional’ paints used by some enthusiasts. All too often their main components are products that were unknown before the mid-twentieth century – casting some doubt on the ‘traditional’ appelation. I am very much a pragmatist, one must understand historical practice, but one must also produce a scheme that can be maintained, is not inordinately expensive, is long-lasting and can be repeated. Health and Safety is also, very much, an issue thee days.
Another Hawksmoor church of the East End that became a project for me was St George in the East. Admittedly, it is a bit of a cheat to include this, as the interior of the church was destroyed in the Blitz. However, the north and south gates and their overthrows were thought to be original and I was asked to examine their paint layers. In this case, I was able, from the paint alone, to tell my client that the gates were not original to the construction of the church. Although erected at the same time as each other, it seemed likely that they dated from the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Old, but not original.
I have never actually had a wishlist, but if I did, the very rare surviving shopfront of 56 Artillery Lane would have been on it. Needless to say, I was thrilled to be invited to undertake the paint analysis of the premises and its neighbour at number 58. Forty-two decorative schemes were found on number 56, which means that roughly every six years it had been repainted since the 1750s. Pale stone colour was used consistently until the end of the nineteenth century, when graining in imitation of oak had been introduced. After further graining, a number of schemes of a deep red-brown colour were applied – probably from the very early years of the twentieth century until the premises were refurbished in the late sixties. Black was employed once before the dark green that was introduced in the seventies and existed until 2005. Needless to say, some felt the green was more of a ‘Georgian’ colour than the stone colour that was readopted. Interestingly enough, another eighteenth century shopfront – this time in Dean St, Soho – was also found to have been painted stone colour originally. Dark green had been employed initially, however, on the shopfront to number 58, which I was able to show had been installed in the 1820s. From the 1870s, it seems both shopfronts tended to be painted in tandem.
In spite of having been badly damaged by a fire in 1972, it was useful to examine the interiors of numbers 56 and 58. It is by looking at a large number of such interiors that one develops a reasonable idea as to how buildings of this period were treated. This information enables me to provide general advice to those clients who do not want to have analysis carried out, but just want steering in the ‘right’ direction.
Number 58 Artillery Lane was very satisfactory from another point of view. My enlightened client managed (courtesy of The Spitalfields Trust) to buy back the panelled room that had been removed from the first floor in the twenties and shipped over to the Art Institute of Chicago. Analysis was also undertaken on that and the original scheme has been reinstated.
More than anything, it is the variety of jobs that I am asked to tackle that I find most stimulating. I have never found myself in a rut and my work is certainly not confined to genteel drawing rooms and panelled interiors. To be asked to examine the fire-damaged bandstand at Arnold Circus was a welcome challenge. Having already sampled a few bandstands in public parks across the country, I get great pleasure from working on projects that can be enjoyed by the many.
The Boundary Estate, constructed from 1890, was one of the world’s earliest social housing schemes. It was built by the London County Council to replace the Friars Mount slum in the Old Nichol between Shoreditch High St and Hackney Road in the north, and Spitalfields to the south. The rubble was used to construct a mound in the middle of Arnold Circus at the centre of the development and the bandstand sits on this. In doing my initial research, I was struck by how much a part it still played in the local community. This bandstand, which was built around 1910, had been badly vandalised but it has now been repainted in its original Brunswick green colour and, once again, sits proudly at the centre of things.
Another community asset that gave me a sense of fulfilment was the analysis of the paint at Assembly Hall of Shoreditch Town Hall. Before I started, I was entirely ignorant of the symbolism of the torch-bearing figure on the façade and the significance behind the motto ‘More Light, More Power’. At the end of the nineteenth century a very ambitious and forward-thinking complex had been constructed in Shoreditch which combined a refuse incinerator, electricity generating station, library, baths and a washhouse. Rubbish was burnt to drive turbines that generated electricity to light the streets and steam that heated the baths and library. The remains of the burnt refuse were recycled further as aggregate for the concrete used in constructing the extension to the Town Hall. A very neat, modern, solution.
Yet another project that gave me a nice rosy glow and broadened my education was the analysis of the Channelsea Bridge (Northern Outfall Sewer bridge) in Stratford. Greatly ignored for many years, this forms a significant part of the group of historic structures at the Abbey Mills pumping station and reflects the early expansion of the complex to cope with London’s growing population. The sewer runs from Wick Lane in Hackney to Beckton sewage treatment works. Most of it was designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette after an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858. Later, I especially enjoyed walking over the newly-refurbished bridge while completing the Capital Ring.
Perhaps my, oldest and certainly one of my favourite, East End clients has been the Geffrye Museum for whom I have carried out a great deal of work. Recent projects have included the restoration of one of the almshouses to its 1780s and 1880s appearance and the repainting of the exterior of the Museum based on the results of my paint analysis.
Thus each job feeds the next and snippets of information picked up during the analysis of one will prove useful on another. And it has been my pleasure to condense and include this knowledge in my book The Anatomy of Colour, which is the first account of the use of paint and colour in decoration in this country from 1650 to 1950.
Barber’s Barn, Hackney. Once home of John Okey, a signatory of Charles I’s death warrant, and later of Patrick Baty’s ancestor, Timothy Bevan (1704-1786) who ran the Plough Court Pharmacy. Its grounds were later cultivated by John Busch, nurseryman to Catherine II of Russia. The house was demolished in the mid-nineteenth century.
Horses were once led blindfold through this passageway at 5 Fournier St, former The Market Cafe and now the Townhouse
Rectory, Fournier St
Interior of Christ Church
58 Artillery Lane
Geffrye Museum
A room at the Geffrye Almshouses furnished as it might have been in 1780
A room at the Geffrye Almshouses furnished as it might have been in 1880
The Anatomy of Colour, published by Thames & Hudson is available from all good bookshops and (with a small discount) from John Sandoe
Alan Stapleton’s Alleys, Byways & Courts
In the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute, I had the good fortune to come across a copy of Alan Stapleton’s London’s Alleys, Byways & Courts, 1923. A title guaranteed to send anyone as susceptible as myself meandering through the capital’s forgotten thoroughfares, yet the great discovery is how many of these have survived in recognisable form today. Clearly a kindred spirit, Stapleton prefaces his work with the following quote from Dr Johnson (who lived in a square at the end of an alley) – ‘If you wish to have a notion of the magnitude of this great city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but survey its innumerable little lanes and courts.’
St John’s Passage, EC1
Passing Alley, EC1
St John’s Gate from Jerusalem Passage, EC1
Stewart’s Place, Clerkenwell Green, EC1
Clerkenwell Close, EC1
Savoy Steps, Strand, WC2
Red Lion Passage, Red Lion Sq, WC1
Corner of Kingley St & Foubert’s Place, W1
Market St, Shepherd Market, W1
Crown Court, Pall Mall, SW1
Rupert Court, W1
Meard’s St, W1
Conduit Court, Long Acre, WC2
Devereaux Court, Strand, WC2
Greystoke Place, Chancery Lane, EC4
Huggin Lane, Cannon St, EC4
Mitre Court, EC1
Faulkner’s Alley, Cow Cross St, EC1
Last of Snatcher’s Island, Drury Lane, WC2
Brick Lane looking north
Brick Lane looking south
‘Hatton in 1708 called Brick Lane the longest lane in London, being nearly three quarters of a mile long. But Park Lane by Hyde Park was then six furlongs thirteen poles in length, so it had the advantage of Brick Lane, the length of which was five furlongs four poles. Today, Brick Lane by taking in its length its old continuations, Tyssen St and Turk’s St now beats it by thirteen poles. Tyssen St measuring one furlong fourteen poles and Turk’s St eight poles, thus bringing the length of the current Brick Lane to six furlongs twenty-six poles. Yet White HorseLane was undoubtedly the longest in London when it existed’ – Alan Stapelton 1923
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
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Bill Brandt, Photographer
Continuing his series of profiles of photographers who pictured the East End in the twentieth century, Contributing Writer Mark Richards explores the photography of Bill Brandt
East End girl dancing the Lambeth Walk, 1939
The most influential modernist photographer of his generation, Bill Brandt revealed a unique way of interpreting the world through photography, making the mundane appear strange and, at times, unnerving. Over three decades, his images of London and elsewhere in England, represent an important record of social history in this country. Although he is less well known than figures such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brandt remains one of the most complex and significant personalities in a golden age of photography on film.
Contemplating Brandt’s work, the first thing you must recognise is that his images share a common quality – as a viewer, you are seeing what he wants you to see. Even the subjects of his photographs are not always who they purport to be. Brandt sought reality through artifice – what mattered to him was the final image not his route to it. He controlled every aspect of his photography, composition, setting and printing. His captions are often deliberately ambiguous, leaving the viewer to draw their own interpretation, contributing to the surrealism that pervades much of his work, especially his portraiture.
Speaking of his photography, Brandt said – “I believe this power of seeing the world as fresh and strange lies hidden in every human being. Vicariously, through another person’s eyes, men and women can see the world anew. It is shown to them as something interesting and exciting. There is given to them again a sense of wonder. This should be the photographer’s aim, for this is the purpose that pictures fulfil in the world as it is today – to meet a need that people cannot or will not meet for themselves. We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas to stand and stare.”
The influence of earlier photographers such as Man Ray and Brassaï can be seen in his early work. Yet Brandt later surpassed both – in terms of his ability to generate a sense of wonder and also of disappointment, when his style became inconsistent and unpredictable.
Brandt established his reputation in the thirties through publication of two books: The English at Home (1936) and A Night in London (1938). The photography in The English at Home bears similarities to the work of Edith Tudor-Hart and they had both been in Vienna in 1934, although their lives and motivations were distinctly different. A Night in London was undoubtedly influenced heavily by Brassaï and his seminal Paris de Nuit (1932). Both of Brandt’s books were social documentaries and comprise images that are immediately accessible yet also sometimes challenging to the casual viewer. Couple in Peckham, 1936 is one of these unsettling images that raises more questions than answers, an ambiguity compounded by the wording of the title.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Brandt pursued an unfettered approach to photography, in line with his personal life which was Bohemian and unconventional for the time. He cast aside aesthetic rules in his search for artistic expression through photography and rejected social norms in his personal life too. This disregard for convention was the key to many of his most striking images.
In 1948, he said: “I am not interested in rules and conventions … photography is not a sport. If I think a picture will look better brilliantly lit, I use lights, or even flash. It is the result that counts, no matter how it was achieved. I find the darkroom work most important, as I can finish the composition of a picture only under the enlarger. I do not understand why this is supposed to interfere with the truth. Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others”
Born into a well-off family, Brandt drifted around Europe throughout his twenties, absorbing influences which would shape his creative work. He said that he began his photographic career in Paris in 1929, where he read surrealist publications such as Bifui, Varietes Minotaure which were publishing photography for its poetic quality for the first time. Also influenced by surrealist films such as Bunuel’s Le Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or, he saw these as catalysts for a new age of poetic photography. Among the influences acquired during these Paris years, which shaped the rest of Brandt’s career, was the photography of Eugène Atget who had died a few years earlier but whose work was just being recognised then.
Brandt was fortunate to be offered an opportunity to work as a pupil in Man Ray’s studio and this was a seminal point in his photographic career. He learned from Man Ray who became his role-model. Brandt considered him to be the most original photographer in the world, working at that time with his inventions of solarisation and Rayographs.
Brandt was attracted to photography both as social reportage and as poetry, with Edward Weston and Man Ray drawing him towards the latter. Yet before the war, Brandt’s photography was mainly social documentary and, like Edith Tudor-Hart, he was fascinated by the extreme social contrast between the rich and poor. When photographing for The English at Home, Brandt first started in the West End, portraying the well-off and the social structures that supported their lavish lifestyles. Then he contrasted these images with a series of photographs of the East End. To this day, these images retain their impact as records of lost lifestyles at both ends of the social spectrum. His photograph East End girl dancing the Lambeth Walk, 1939 possesses a joyful innocence that is in poignant contrast what lay just ahead.
In 1937, Brandt headed north to the Durham Coalfields and took some of his most powerful images of England in the thirties. He considered his photograph of a coal searcher with a bicycle to be the most successful of this series and it is impossible to look at that image without being moved by his sympathetic representation of working-class life during a period of mass unemployment. Brandt’s Coal miners’ houses with no windows to the street, East Durham 1937 is stark and surreal, inviting accusations that it was manipulated although there is no evidence that it was. The picture’s location is deliberately ambiguous and it challenges our preconceptions of life in East Durham at that time.
Returning to London, Brandt set about photographing the nocturnal city at night for his next book. The result was a remarkable series of noir photographs, some of indistinct shapes and others of characters lost in the blackness of London after nightfall.
Unlike those who engaged with their subjects, Brandt was deliberately distant when photographing people in their homes, concentrating on the surroundings and the image as a whole. It was an approach which contributed an otherworldly feel to the images.
Brandt outlined his strategy thus – “I always take portraits in my sitter’s own surroundings. I concentrate very much on the picture as a whole and leave the sitter rather to himself. I hardly talk and barely look at him. This often seems to make people forget what is going on and any affected or self-conscious expression usually disappears… I think a good portrait ought to tell something of the subject’s past and suggest something of his future.”
When he moved into portraiture, the majority were initially published by Liliput and then Harper’s Bazaar but he also had pictures printed in Picture Post. His focus was on literary and artistic figures and, to my knowledge, he never photographed politicians or sports personalities. Brandt began experimenting further with his technique, purchasing an old extreme wide-angle camera and using this to challenge traditional portraiture. The distorting effect and deep depth of field were reminiscent of the new cinematography at that time and one of his most well-known images in this genre Portrait of a young girl, Eaton Place may have been inspired by Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.
After the war, Brandt’s style changed dramatically again. He lost interest in documentary. Everyone else was doing it by then. Often asked about this change, he revealed that he believed the basis of his social images of the thirties had been eroded by a new social order.
“my main theme of the past few years had disappeared; England was no longer a country of marked social contrast. Whatever the reason, the poetic trend of photography, which had already excited me in my early Paris days, began to fascinate me again. it seemed to me that there were wide fields still unexplored. I began to photograph nudes, portraits, and landscapes”
Much of the character of what Brandt achieved in his earlier period was manufactured in the darkroom. This work was notable for its subtlety – something which can only be appreciated in the original print. It was one of the reasons why his work attracted the attention of museums and galleries. When Brandt changed his style, much of the subtlety of his atmospheric images of the thirties was deliberately sacrificed and, in his nudes of the fifties, we are confronted with deep shadows and burned-out highlights. It was an approach which led to the erosion of his reputation in some quarters but Brandt remained defiant.
The impact of this aesthetic transformation was revealed in an exchange of letters between Edward Steichen, curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Brandt in 1959 in which Steichen reluctantly expressed his concerns over what he perceived to be the deteriorating quality of Brandt’s prints. Brandt was deeply hurt by Steichen’s criticism but defended the change, saying that the highly contrasted black and white effect suited his pictures better.
Since his death, copies of Brandt’s photographs made without regard to his artistic preferences and distributed through the internet have compromised the understanding and appreciation of his photography. The only real way to understand Brandt as a photographer is through his original prints. The quality of reproduction in Shadows and Light by Sarah Hermanson Meister is the closest any publication I am aware of has come to Brandt’s intentions and I recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn more about this remarkable photographer.
Shad Thames, a street between warehouses in Bermondsey c.1936
Early morning on the Thames, thirties
Porter at Billingsgate Market, 1934
Housewife, Bethnal Green 1937
Customers at the Crooked Billet, Tower Hill 1939
Couple in Peckham, 1936
Circus Boyhood, 1933
A Lyons Nippy (Miss Hibbott), 1939
At Charley Brown’s pub, Limehouse, 1945
In a Mayfair drawing room, 1939
Parlourmaid preparing a bath before dinner, 1937
Hatter’s window, Bond Street 1935
After the celebration, 1934
Taxi, Lower Regent St 1935
Piccadilly at Night, 1938
Policeman in a Bermondsey Alley, 1938
St Paul’s in the moonlight, 1942
Sikh family sheltering in an alcove where coffins once stood in the crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields, 1940
Battersea Bridge, 1939
Northumbrian coal miner eating his evening meal, 1937
Coal miners’ houses with no windows to the street, East Durham 1937
Coal searcher returning home, Jarrow 1937
Portrait of a young girl, Eaton Place, 1955
Nude, Belgravia, 1951
Photographs copyright © Estate of Bill Brandt
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Save The Bethnal Green Mulberry
The East End Preservation Society has launched a petition to save the centuries-old Bethnal Green Mulberry and below is my account of the scandal in which developers Crest Nicholson were unlawfully granted permission to dig up the tree this spring. CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION
Design by Paul Bommer
Growing in the grounds of the former London Chest Hospital next to Victoria Park, the Bethnal Green Mulberry stands today in the middle of a development site for luxury flats. It is a gnarly old specimen which in local lore is understood to be more than four hundred years old and is believed to be the oldest tree in the East End. Centuries ago, these were the gardens of Bishop Bonner’s Palace and it is he who is credited with planting the Mulberry tree.
I find it a poignant spectacle to view this venerable Black Mulberry. Damaged by a bomb in the Second World War, it has charring still visible upon its trunk which has split to resemble a Barbara Hepworth sculpture. Yet, in spite of its scars and the props that are required to support its tottering structure, the elderly tree produces a luxuriant covering of green leaves each spring and bears a reliably generous crop of succulent fruit every summer.
Astonishingly, it seemed that all this history and a Tree Protection Order are insufficient to protect the venerable Mulberry. This spring, developer Crest Nicholson obtained a waiver from Tower Hamlets Senior Arboricultural Officer, Edward Buckton, permitting them to prune it, dig it up and move it to clear the way for their proposed development, even though this has not yet been approved by the council (headquarters at the appropriately named Mulberry Place).
The decision was made under delegated powers by Buckton on the basis of a report commissioned by the developer from planning consultants ‘Tree: Fabrik’ who conveniently dismissed any notion that this Mulberry is a veteran specimen, suggesting instead that it is a more recent planting which might easily survive having its roots and branches pruned, and being moved out of the way this spring. The first that was known of the decision by members of the public and local councillors was when an announcement was posted on a lamppost in Bethnal Green, precluding the possibility of any consultation.
Enter the heroic White Knight of East End conservation Tom Ridge, a former geography teacher and veteran local heritage campaigner, who issued Judicial Review proceedings at his own expense, claiming that the council had acted unlawfully in granting permission to dig up the tree and thus obtaining a stay of execution for the ancient Mulberry. As expert witness, Ridge employed Chartered Arboriculturist Julian Forbes-Laird who was the technical editor of the British Standard for tree protection.
Forbes-Laird’s report as submitted to the High Court makes compelling reading. “I identify the Mulberry as a veteran tree,” he wrote, “I cannot understand how any reasonable arboriculturist could conclude otherwise.” He quotes Gascoigne’s map of 1703 confirming the location of the Bishop’s Hall and even refers to a woodcut in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs published in 1563 that illustrates the Bishop flogging a martyr in his garden beneath the branches of a young tree which he suggests is the Mulberry in question. He describes the commemorative inkwell kept at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, dating from 1915, with a brass plate explaining it was made from a branch of the Mulberry beneath which Bishop Bonner sat while deciding which heretics to execute.
These scraps of evidence confirm a long-standing cultural history attached to the Bethnal Green Mulberry, which was already considered to be ancient over than a century ago. A feeble claim by the developer that concrete found among the roots confirms the recent origin of the tree receives short shrift from Forbes-Laird, who points out that the Romans used concrete to build the Pantheon. He confirms, “there is no evidence that the Mulberry stands upon modern made ground, meaning that it could, indeed, be as old as is believed.”
Most sobering is Forbes-Laird’s conclusion, “Overall, I consider that the intended tree works offer very little chance of the tree’s survival.” Thankfully, Tom Ridge won the Judicial Review and, in a Consent Order sealed by the High Court in July, the council’s decision was quashed. The Council were also ordered to pay Tom Ridge’s costs, although they are refusing to comply with this part of the judgement.
Even now the Bethnal Green Mulberry is not saved.
In their current proposals, Crest Nicholson have plonked a block of luxury flats exactly where the Mulberry grows, which means that Tower Hamlets planning committee may be confronted with a choice between the tree or the building when the application is considered later this year. Yet it would be a simple matter to move the proposed building within the ample grounds of the former London Chest Hospital to allow the Mulberry sufficient space to flourish. With a little imagination, the flats could even be named Mulberry Court.
Crest Nicholson’s project is a vast overblown development with a very disappointing low level of ‘affordable’ housing, which includes hideous ‘heritage style’ alterations to the listed Chest Hospital building. I call upon them to show some respect to the wishes of local people by saving the Mulberry tree and reconsidering their whole development.
Tom Ridge, White Knight of East End Heritage Campaigners (Portrait by Lucinda Douglas Menzies)
Illustration of Bishop Bonner scourging a heretic from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, 1563
Crest Nicholson’s proposed development
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Terry Bloomfield, Fish Dealer & Photographer
Terry Bloomfield was born in 1934 and grew up in Columbia Rd as the third generation of a family that worked at Billingsgate, where he ran his own shellfish business. Between 1982, when the market moved to the Isle of Dogs, and 2011, when Terry retired, he recorded the life of Billingsgate in thousands of black and white photographs which reveal a candid insider’s viewpoint of this extraordinary nocturnal phenomenon. You can visit an exhibition of these pictures at Standpoint Gallery in Hoxton from 23rd September – 1st October.
Photographs copyright © Terry Bloomfield
Terry Bloomfield’s exhibition runs from 23rd September – 1st October at the Standpoint Gallery, 45 Coronet St, Hoxton, N1 6HD
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Derrick Porter, Hoxton Poet
Derrick Porter will be reading his poems at V&A Museum of Childhood Bethnal Green as part of our celebration of AS Jasper’s A HOXTON CHILDHOOD & THE YEARS AFTER on Thursday 14th September at 6:30pm Click here for tickets
Derrick Porter
This is the gentle face of Derrick Porter, craggy and wise, framed by snowy hair and punctuated with a pair of sharp eyes that reveal a hint of his imaginative capacity. Standing against a rural backdrop upon the banks of the river Ching in Essex not far from High Beach where John Clare was confined, Derrick looks every inch an English poet and he is quick to admit his love of nature. Yet, although he acquired an affection for the countryside at an early age and Chingford is his place of residence, the focus of Derrick’s literary landscape and centre of his personal universe is his place of origin – Hoxton.
“It was a place we all wanted to get out of – it was a tough place to live,” Derrick confessed to me, recalling his childhood, “but the the culture of Hoxton and that era was my imaginative education.”
“My interest in literature stems from spending so many years in hospital up to the age of thirteen and they used to read to us – I looked forward to it so much, I learnt to love reading stories,” he confided, explaining that he suffered from tuberculosis as a child and was exiled from London for long stretches in hospitals. “They made us stay out in the fresh air which was the worst possible thing because it actually helped the germs to flourish, when the foggy atmosphere of London was much more beneficial to sufferers – but they didn’t understand that in those days.
My dad worked at the Daily Mail as a printer and my mum was a housewife, but I never saw him until I was six when he returned from the war. He had been captured by the Japanese and was held in a prisoner of war camp. At first, they sent him to America which was where they kept them to build them up again before they came home.
Before the age of ten years old, I lived in a prefab in Vince St next to the Old St roundabout and then we moved to Fairchild House in Fanshawe St. The prefabs were made of asbestos without any insulation and were very cold in winter. As children, we used to break off pieces of asbestos and throw them on to the bonfire to watch them explode. Maybe that affected my health? We had free rein then and we played in the old bombed buildings at the back of Moorgate – that was our playground.
At thirteen, I had an operation to have half of my lung removed and they told my mother that they didn’t know if I would recover. From then on, I took care of my own health and I became a fitness and health junkie. When I left school I thought I’d like to go back to the countryside and, when the teacher asked my ambition, I said, ‘I’m going to work on a farm,’ he told me, ‘You won’t find many in ‘Oxton, Porter.’ My father got me a job as in the general printing trade but it did my lungs in.
I always had this compulsion to get away from Hoxton and write. So I decided to emigrate to Australia on my own. I knew I had to get away. I was nineteen when I went for two years. I was engaged to be married but I broke the engagement and emigrated. I went to writing workshops in Australia and my earliest poems were written while I was there. I got a job as a printer on the Sydney Morning Herald. At first, they told me I couldn’t get a job without a union card, but then there was a bit of skullduggery. They took pity on me and, when I got a job, they gave me a card.
After that, I travelled in the USA with this small bag of my poems. Then, in Las Vegas, I stayed in this $1-a-night fleapit for three nights while I was waiting for the coach to take me to Los Angeles. Twenty minutes after I had boarded the bus, I realised I had left my bag behind with all the poems I had written in the previous two years. I cried, I felt so dismayed. It was a significant loss.
On my return, I moved into Langbourne Buildings off Leonard St in Shoreditch. I was surrounded by my friends and family and this was where I first joined a writing group. It was in Dalston and I started to write regularly. After seven years, I began to write some decent poems and then I read in the Hackney Gazette about Centreprise Literary Trust. So I went along there and met Ken Worpole, and gave him some of my poems. Then he got back in touch and said he’d like to publish them, and that was the first work I ever had in print.
By now I was twenty-nine and married with two young children, and we were offered the opportunity of swapping our flat for a house in Orpington. It was a fabulous house with a garden and we couldn’t refuse, but the rent was three times the price. We lived there for thirty-odd years and my poetry developed, I became a member of the Poetry Society and had my works published in magazines, although I rarely send my poems out because I always think I can do better.
I bought paintings from D & J Simons & Sons Ltd, picture frame and moulding makers, in the Hackney Rd and, when I moved to Orpington, I bought all their ‘second’ picture frames off them and sold them there. I started working for myself, buying reproduction furniture and selling it in Orpington Village Hall and I earned a living from that for twenty years. But all the time I was writing, writing and I had a lot of encouragement from people.
I rework my poems a lot because I’d rather have one good one than a lot of mediocre ones. I have written a lot of poems and discarded most of them because I’d rather just keep my best. I love letter writing and I believe it can be an art if it is done well. As long as I live, I’ll carry on writing.”
Derrick and his childhood friend Roy Wild on the steps of the eighteenth century house in Charles Sq where they played as children
Sitting Under a Tree in Charles Square
The clear urgency of the voice caused me
to look up, my finger marking the place
in the newspaper I was then reading…
How old do you think this tree is? it asked.
I said it was here when I was a boy.
Well, it won’t be for much longer, it said.
The owner of the voice began to circle
the tree before running his hands over
the gnarled trunk as if in search of a precise spot.
From under his coat appeared a long-handled axe.
It would be better if you moved, he said.
But not before the tree had endured
several blows…and a large, older woman, shouted
Are we to suffer this nonsense again?
Come home and do something useful for once.
Instantly the attack ceased and – without
another word passing between them – his steps
quickened to reach, if not overtake, the other.
My thumb then lifted from the newspaper
returning my eye to the Middle East
where, as yet, no allaying voice can be heard.
Derrick standing outside the flat at Fairchild House in Fanshawe St where he grew up
Derby Day in Fairchild House
Walking along our third floor balcony
I can see – before I enter the door – the piano
blocking the view into our living room.
You are watching the TV, circling horses
in The Sporting Life as John Rickman
calls home another of those certainties
you always said you should have backed.
From the kitchen the clang of pots
tells me it’s a Friday and mum’s busy
preparing a stew. A day perhaps
when sand had been kicked into my face
and I’d come home to pump iron.
If so, my bedroom door will be locked
and I’ll be lifting sand-filled-petrol-cans
hung along an old broom handle.
It’s also possible it’s the evening
of the Pitfield Institute’s Weight-Lifting final
when I won my only trophy. Or the day
cash went missing and I bought my first watch.
But as I turn the key and enter the door
I want it to be the day when even
the piano joined in…and Gordon Richards
rode Pinza to victory in the Derby.
The Apprentice
When Mr Hounslow asked the class what jobs
we had in mind, I answered,
Working on a farm, sir. “You won’t find many
in Hoxton” the reply. Come summer
I started work for a musical instrument
supplier in Paul Street, close to the old Victorian
Fire Station later re-sited in Old Street.
For one day a week I was promoted
to van boy and helped deliver to the likes
of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho,
a world far removed from that of Hoxton.
Here I saw the upbeat side of the business,
the posh shiny part that could open doors
if you had the right kind of connections.
After a year working with men who enjoyed
nothing better than to send the new boys out
to buy rubber nails and glass hammers,
if never themselves discovering who put
the mouse droppings into their biscuit tin,
I began to question where I was heading.
That summer – while on holiday in Ostend
with the Lion Club – my dad handed in
my notice…and when I returned, was told
I had to start work in the Printing Trade.
Its every aspect – machinery, ink, oil,
noise and dust, the very air – a sort of
road taken, as old Hounslow might have said,
for there being no farms in Hoxton.
Derrick Porter at Fairchild House, Hoxton
Poems copyright © Derrick Porter
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King Sour, Poet & Rapper of Bethnal Green
Alice Pattullo’s Household Lore
Illustrator Alice Pattullo sent me these screenprints she has been working on recently. “They were inspired by my ongoing fascination with superstitions, old wives tales and nonsensical rhymes,” Alice explained, “This series ‘household lore’ is a culmination of this collection of lore to take heed of at home.”
Images copyright © Alice Pattullo
Each of these prints has been produced in an edition of twenty at £25 each and they may be purchased until the end of September from Yorkshire Sculpture Park
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