Cyril Mann, Painter
In the fourth of my series of profiles of artists featured in EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century to be published by Spitalfields Life Books in October, I present the apocalyptic paintings of Cyril Mann. Click here to learn how you can support the publication of EAST END VERNACULAR
Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eel Stall, Petticoat Lane, c. 1950
After serving as a Gunner in the Royal Artillery in World War II, Cyril Mann returned to live in a tiny flat in Paul St with his wife Mary and small daughter Sylvia in 1946. Close to where the Barbican stands today, this area at the boundary of the City of London had suffered drastic bomb damage and much of it remained a wasteland for decades. Roving around these desolate streets as far east as Spitalfields, Cyril Mann discovered the subject matter for a body of works which became the focus of a major exhibition at the Wildenstein Gallery in 1948.
Losing his hair in his thirties, Cyril Mann had the look of a man older than his years. Through the Depression he had been unemployed and close to starvation, yet thanks to a trust fund set up by Erica Marx he entered the Royal Academy Schools at twenty years old in 1931. For one so young, he had already seen a great deal of life. At twelve, he had been the youngest boy ever to win a scholarship to Nottingham College of Art, before leaving at fifteen to be a missionary in Canada. Quickly abandoning this ambition, he became a logger, a miner and a printer, until returning to London to renew his pursuit of a career as an artist. Ever restless, he moved to Paris after three years at the Royal Academy and there he met his first wife Mary Jervis Read.
Forced to leave his wife and baby when he was called up in 194o, Cyril Mann did not paint at all for the duration of the war. Back in London and battling ill-health, he set out to make up for lost time. The fragmented urban landscape of bombsites that was familiar to Londoners was new to him and, turning his gaze directly into the sun, he sought to paint it transfigured by light. Channelling his turbulent emotion into these works, Cyril Mann strove to discover an equilibrium in the disparate broken elements he saw before him, and many of these paintings are almost monochromatic, as if the light is dissolving the forms into a mirage.
During these years, Cyril Mann’s life underwent dramatic change. He obtained a teaching job at the Central School of Art in 1947 and exhibited at the prestigious Wildenstein Galery, showing his new works in 1948. Yet at the same time, his marriage broke down and he found himself alone, painting in the tiny flat in Paul St. Whilst critically acclaimed, his exhibition was a commercial failure because, in post-war London, nobody wanted to see images of bombsites and consequently these important works became forgotten.
Yet, through his struggle, Cyril Mann’s work as an artist had acquired a new momentum and, after 1950, a bold use of colour returned to his painting. In 1956, he was offered a flat in the newly-built modernist Bevin Court built by Tecton in Islington, where today a plaque commemorates him. In 1964, he moved east to Leyton and then Walthamstow,where he died in 1980.
At a time when all other artists turned away from painting the London streets, Cyril Mann made it his subject. While these pictures may not have suited the taste of the post-war capital, they comprise a unique body of work that witnesses the spirit and topography of these threadbare years. As his second wife, Renske who met Cyril Mann in 1959, assured me, “I believe he is the most significant London painter of the nineteen-forties, post-war.”
Cyril Mann preparing for his exhibition at Wildenstein Gallery in 1948
St Paul’s from Moor Lane, 1948
Cyril in his crowded flat in Paul St, c. 1950
Christ Church Spitalfields seen across bombsites from Scrutton St
Christ Church Spitalfields seen over bombsites from Redchurch St
Bomb site in Paul St with cat, c. 1950
Christ Church Spitalfields seen from Shoreditch
Bomb sites around Paul St, c. 1950
Christ Church Spitalfields from Worship St, c. 1948
Streetscape with red pillar box
East End shop
Trolley bus in Finsbury Sq, c. 1949
Finsbury Sq, c. 1949
Finsbury Sq, c. 1949
Red lamp post, Old St
Bombsite at Old St
Cock & Magpie, Wilson St, Shoreditch
St Michael, Shoreditch, c. 1948
St Michael and St Leonard’s Shoreditch from Leonard St, c. 1950
Angel Islington from City Rd, 1950
St James Church, Pentonville Rd, Islington, 1950
Cyril Mann (1911-1980)
Images copyright © Estate of Cyril Mann
Paintings by Cyril Mann can be seen at Piano Nobile Gallery
Phil Maxwell & Hazuan Hashim’s East End Films
In celebration of Phil Maxwell & Hazuan Hashim’s AUSTERITY FIGHT which premieres at Rich Mix in the Bethnal Green Rd tomorrow, Friday 16th June as part of EAST END FILM FESTIVAL 2017, I am offering this retrospective of their films. Click here to book for Austerity Fight.
Sandra, 2008
Les, 2010
Olive, 2010
From Cable St to Brick Lane, 2012
East End Lives, 2009
East End Lives 2, 2010
East End Lives, 3 2010
https://vimeo.com/173258928
The Photographer, 2016
Phil Maxwell signs copies of BRICK LANE at the launch in 2014 (Photograph by Simon Mooney)
You may also like to look at Phil Maxwell’s photography
Phil Maxwell in Bethnal Green Rd
Dan Jones, Artist
In the third of my series of profiles of artists featured in EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century to be published by Spitalfields Life Books in October, I present the joyous vision of Dan Jones. Click here to learn how you can support the publication of EAST END VERNACULAR
Click to enlarge Dan Jones’ painting of Brick Lane 1978
In Dan Jones’ exuberant and playful painting, Brick Lane is a stage upon which an epic political drama is enacted. From this vantage point at the corner of the Truman Brewery, we see an Anti-Racist demonstration advancing up Brick Lane, while a bunch of skinheads stand at the junction with Hanbury St outside the fortuitously named “Skin Corner.” Meanwhile, a policeman stops a black boy on the opposite corner in front of a partially visible sign reading as “Sus,” in reference to the “Sus” law that permitted police to stop and search anyone on suspicion, a law repealed in 1981. And in the foreground of all this action, life goes on – two senior Bengali men embrace, as Dan and his family arrive to join the march, while bystanders of different creeds and colours chat together.
Dan Jones’ mother was the artist Pearl Binder, who came to live in Whitechapel in the nineteen twenties, and since 1967, Dan has lived down in Cable St where he brought up his family in an old terraced house next to the Crown & Dolphin. A prolific painter, Dan has creating many panoramic works – often of political scenes, such as you see here, as well as smaller pictures produced to illustrate two books of Nursery Rhymes, “Inky, Pinky, Ponky” and “Mother Goose comes to Cable St,” both published in the eighties. In recent years, he has undertaken a series of large playground murals portraying school children and the infinite variety of their games and rhymes.
Employed at first in youth work in the Cable St area, and subsequently involved in social work with immigrant families, Dan has been a popular figure in the East End for many years, and his canvases are crammed with affectionate portraits of hundreds of the people that he has come to know through his work and political campaigning. Today Dan works for Amnesty International, and continues to paint and to pursue his lifelong passion for collecting rhymes.
There is a highly personal vision of the East End manifest in Dan Jones’ paintings, which captivate me with the quality of their intricate detail and tender observation. When Dan showed me his work, he pointed out the names of all the people portrayed and told me the story behind every picture. Like the Pipe & Drum Band in Wapping painted by Dan in 1974 – to give but one example – which had been going since the eighteen eighties using the same sheet music. Their performances were a living fossil of the music of those days, until a row closed them down in 1980. “They were good – good flute players and renowned as boxers,” Dan informed me respectfully.
The End of Club Row, 1983. Club Row was closed after the government banned animal markets
Last Supper at St Botolph’s, Aldgate. Rev Malcolm Johnson preaches to the homeless at Easter 1982.
Pipe and Drum Band in Tent St, Wapping, 1974.
The Poplar Rates Rebellion of 1921
Parade on the the sixtieth anniversary of the Battle of Cable St, 1996
Live poultry sold in Hessel St.
Fishing at Shadwell Basin.
Tubby Isaacs in Goulston St, Petticoat Lane.
Palaseum Cinema in Commercial Rd
A Teddy Bear rampages outside the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
Funeral of a pig in Cable St, Dan Jones and his family come out of their house to watch.
Christ Church School, Brick Lane
Liverpool St Station
Watney Market
Paintings copyright © Dan Jones
Click here to preorder a copy of EAST END VERNACULAR for £25
Doreen Fletcher, Painter
In the second of my series of profiles of artists featured in EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century to be published by Spitalfields Life Books in October, I present the remarkable paintings of Doreen Fletcher. Click here to learn how you can support the publication of EAST END VERNACULAR
Hairdresser, Ben Jonson Rd, 2001
This is a small selection of the paintings and drawings created by Doreen Fletcher in the East End between 1983 and 2003. “I was discouraged by the lack of interest,” admitted Doreen to me plainly, explaining why she gave up after twenty years of doing this work. Then, for a decade, all these pictures sat in Doreen’s attic until I persuaded her to take them out two years ago and let me photograph them for publication here on Spitalfields Life.
Doreen came to the East End in 1983 from West London. “My marriage broke up and I met someone new who lived in Clemence St, E14,” she revealed, “it was like another world in those days.” Yet Doreen immediately warmed to her new home and felt inspired to paint. “I loved the light, it seemed so sharp and clear in the East End, and it reminded me of the working class streets in the Midlands where I grew up,” she confided to me, “It disturbed me to see these shops and pubs closing and being boarded up, so I thought, ‘I must make a record of this,’ and it gave me a purpose.”
For twenty years, Doreen conscientiously sent off transparencies of her pictures to galleries, magazines and competitions, only to receive universal rejection. As a consequence, she forsook her art work entirely in 2003 and took a managerial job, and did no painting for the next ten years. But eventually, Doreen had enough of this too and has recently rediscovered her exceptional neglected talent in painting.
Many of Doreen’s pictures exist as the only record of places that have long gone and it is highly gratifying that she is finally receiving the recognition she deserves, not just for outstanding quality of her painting but also for her brave perseverance in pursuing her clear-eyed vision of the East End in spite of the lack of any interest or support.
Bartlett Park, 1990
Terminus Restaurant, 1984
Bus Stop, Mile End, 1983
Terrace in Commercial Rd under snow, 2003
Shops in Commercial Rd, 2003
Snow in Mile End Park, 1986
Laundrette, Ben Jonson Rd, 2001
The Lino Shop, 2001
Caird & Rayner Building, Commercial Rd, 2001
Rene’s Cafe, 1986
SS Robin, 1996
Benji’s Mile End, 1992
Railway Bridge, 1990
St Matthias Church, 1990
The Albion Pub, 1992
Turner’s Rd, 1998
The Condemned House, 1983
Leslie’s Grocer, Turner’s Rd, 1983 (Pencil Drawing)
Newsagents, Canning Town, 1991 (Coloured Crayon Drawing)
Bridge Wharf, 1984 (Pencil Drawing)
Pubali Cafe, Commercial Rd, 1990 (Coloured Crayon Drawing)
Ice Crean Van, 1990 (Coloured Crayon Drawing)
Images copyright © Doreen Fletcher
Click here to preorder a copy of EAST END VERNACULAR for £25
In the first of a series of profiles of artists featured in EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century to be published by Spitalfields Life Books in October, David Buckman author of From Bow to Biennale examines the life of Albert Turpin, artist, window cleaner & Mayor of Bethnal Green. Click here to learn how you can support the publication of EAST END VERNACULAR
Albert Turpin, Artist, Window Cleaner & Mayor of Bethnal Green
It is thanks to chance that the work of artist Albert Turpin has been preserved. Based in Claredale House, Claredale St, Bethnal Green, Turpin pursued his mission to record the area where he had been born and lived until his death in 1964. His work always sold well but, by the time his widow Sally died in 1981, Turpin’s realism had become unfashionable.
With their only daughter Joan living abroad, Sally worried about what to do with the legacy of paintings remaining after Turpin’s death. They might easily have ended in a skip but, luckily, storage was secured and they survived. Chance also played an important part in steering Turpin towards the East London Group and John Cooper, the man who inspired it.
Turpin’s background was not an auspicious one for an aspiring artist, born in 1900 in Ravenscroft Buildings off Columbia Rd, Bethnal Green, an area of acute deprivation. His father earned what little he could at jobs including being a tea-cooper, feather sorter and casual docker. When Albert Turpin left Globe Rd School at fourteen, like his father, he tried a bit of everything to earn a crust. But at fifteen, he joined the army until – at his father’s insistence – when the first World War was killing thousands, he was extracted and enlisted in the Royal Marines.
On ship, he began “to dabble away, trying to get Gibraltar and other overseas scenes down on canvas.” He was sufficiently encouraged by shipmates that, after he married Sally Fellows in 1922 and took up window cleaning, he finished the windows by lunchtime so he could spend the rest of the day painting. Interviewed after the Second World War when he was an established exhibitor at the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s East End Academy shows, Turpin revealed his motives as “a love of nature and a desire to copy it,” and the wish to show others “the beauty in the East End and to record the old streets before they go.”
Turpin was aware that tuition could improve his technique and he spent six years taking evening classes at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Institute and at the Bow & Bromley Commercial Institute, showing paintings in exhibitions held by the Institute at the Bethnal Green Museum. Among Albert’s teachers in Bethnal Green was the inspirational John Cooper, whose classes at Bow led to the important East London Art Club show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in December 1928, in which Albert exhibited ten canvasses. They included characteristic and popular Turpin subjects, such as ‘The Dustbin,’ ‘At the Ale House,’ ‘Street Scene,’ ‘The Fruit Stall’ and ‘Jellied Eels’, but a portrait of ‘The Artist’s Wife’ was not for sale.
The Whitechapel show was so successful that Charles Aitken, Director of the National Gallery, Millbank, (now Tate Britain), transferred some of the pictures to his own gallery, including several of Turpin’s. Then, in the spring of 1929, a modified version of the Tate show toured to Salford, featuring Turpin’s ‘The Artist’s Wife’ and ‘The Dustbin,’ which had been bought by the influential dealer Sir Joseph Duveen.
While studying in Bethnal Green, Turpin met other future East London Group exhibitors who continued their tuition with John Cooper at Bow – men such as George Board, Archibald Hattemore, Elwin Hawthorne and the Steggles brothers, Harold and Walter. Hawthorne’s wife Lilian recalled Albert fondly as“a jolly chap” and Walter Steggles, who sketched with him, remembered his great sense of humour, describing Turpin as a man who “made jokes about everything including himself. He was liked by all who knew him.”
When Alex Reid & Lefevre launched the first of its eight annual exhibitions of work by the East London Group in November 1929, Turpin showed three pictures and in following years he contributed regularly to other East London Group exhibitions, as well as these annual shows at the Lefevre Galleries. But latterly his submissions became sporadic and his work was not present in the sixth exhibition in December 1934 or the last in December 1936. Group member Cecil Osborne told me that John Cooper had declined one of Turpin’s later pictures, a painting of his wife, and that the artist “went off in a huff and that was the last we saw of him.” Yet by the mid-thirties, Turpin had other demands upon his time.
In his fascinating unpublished autobiography, Turpin recalls how, once, on the way to an art group, he had been impressed to hear a speech by Bill Gee, a working class activist. It was during the winter of 1926, in the year of the General Strike, and Turpin wrote that Gee “did not teach me anything I did not already know, but what he did do was to make me forget all about my art class and join up with the organised workers right there.” Turpin joined the Labour Party, becoming affiliated to the North-East Bethnal Green Branch and eventually also to the Co-operative Party.
The East London Group had no political affiliations itself, but for Albert Turpin his political standpoint and his art merged naturally. His cartoons in local newspapers always “had a message,” Walter Steggles recalled. Speaking of Turpin’s painting ‘The Dustbin,’ originally displayed at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Steggles recalled Turpin’s original title was ‘Man Must Eat,’ and the canvas depicted a man eating food scavenged from a bin – until Turpin modified the picture to avoid offending the public. Yet Turpin’s forthright titles did not deter the critics. Writing about the picture he submitted to the second Lefevre exhibition in December 1930, that model of refinement, The Lady, compared Turpin’s subjects to those of Daumier and Hogarth, praising his “rare and precious gift! – a sense of the physical beauty of oil paint.” Later Lefevre contributions would include titles that speak for themselves, such as ‘Unemployed,’ ‘Night Shelter,’ ‘Rags’ and ‘Slum Clearance.’
It was a tribute to Turpin’s physical stamina and determination that while earning his living as a window cleaner, he managed to pursue his political career and his art. He was an active anti-Fascist protester and, while a member of the Bethnal Green Borough Council, appeared at Old St Police Court accused of using insulting words and behaviour and assaulting a constable. He was also active in the Ex-Servicemen’s National Movement “for Peace, Freedom and Democracy” and supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
The Second World War offered further outlets for Turpin’s artistic talents. Having served part-time with the London Fire Brigade from early 1938, then full-time in September 1939 when he acted as secretary of a branch of the Fire Brigades Union, Turpin joined the National Fire Service in August 1941, remaining with it until October 1946. From 1940, he was an official Fire Brigade War Artist with his work exhibited both in Britain and North America. While an instructor at a London Fields Fire Service training school, after telling students the right way of doing a thing, he would sometimes “make a lightning sketch to show what might happen if they ignored my advice.”
After leaving the Fire Service, Turpin resumed window cleaning and part-time painting and was unanimously elected Mayor of Bethnal Green, 1946-47. He refused to wear mayoral robes, the Evening News reported, “because he thinks it is a waste of taxpayers’ money.” As a man with a strong moral standpoint, loathing gambling and – his mother having died of cirrhosis of the liver – refusing to clean pub windows, Turpin found Dr Frank Buchman’s Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement attractive when he encountered it in 1946. Buchman hoped for “moral and spiritual rearmament” to achieve “a hate-free, fear-free, greed-free world.” After seeing the MRA play ‘The Forgotten Factor,’ Turpin was gripped by their message and became active in the cause. Early in 1947, MRA’s publication ‘New World News’ pictured Turpin on its cover as “Victory Mayor,” standing among blitzed ruins.
Until his death, seventeen years later, he continued to make drawings and paintings of Bethnal Green, Stepney, Hackney, Hoxton and Islington. Although the East London Group was no longer active post-war, Turpin still showed his pictures – at Morpeth School in Bethnal Green, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Guildhall Art Gallery and Qantas Gallery in Piccadilly.
Albert Turpin’s paintings are a unique record of the old East End by one who knew it intimately.
Columbia Market – Oil on board
The Arches, Mare St – Oil on board
Cable St – Oil on board
Marian Sq, Hackney – Oil on canvas, 1952
Rebuilding St Matthew’s Church, Bethnal Green – Oil on canvas, c.1956
Verger’s House, Shoreditch – Oil on canvas, 1954
Salmon & Ball, Bethnal Green – Oil on canvas, c.1955
Shakey’s Yard in Winter – Oil on Canvas, c.1952
Hackney Empire – Oil on board
East End Vernacular
Provisional cover design featuring ‘St James Rd, Old Ford’ by Henry Silk
With your help, this October I plan to publish EAST END VERNACULAR, a beautifully illustrated hardback book celebrating the work of artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century.
In recent years, the East London Group of painters has been successfully reclaimed from obscurity – but I have found there are plenty of equally wonderful artists who came before and after who also deserve to be recognised, and a survey of all this important work is long overdue. Many of the paintings in the book have not been published before and many of these are by artists who have been unjustly neglected.
There are three ways you can help:
1. I am seeking readers who are willing to invest £1000 in EAST END VERNACULAR to help me bring recognition to this important aspect of East End culture, by cherishing these magnificent paintings in a handsome book. In return, we will publish your name in the book and invite you to a celebratory dinner hosted by yours truly at the end of June. If you would like to know more, please drop me an email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
2. Preorder a copy of EAST END VERNACULAR and you will receive your copy in the first week of October when the book is published. Click here to preorder your copy
3. If you own a painting of a street scene that you believe should be included in EAST END VERNACULAR please send me a photograph of it spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
On this page, you will find a selection of works from some of those artists we mean to include in EAST END VERNACULAR: John Allin, Pearl Binder, James Boswell, Roland Collins, Alfred Daniels, Anthony Eyton, Doreen Fletcher, Geoffrey Fletcher, Barnett Freedman, Noel Gibson, Charles Ginner, Harry Harmer, Elwin Hawthorne, Rose Henriques, Dan Jones, Nathaniel Kornbluth, Leon Kossoff, Cyril Mann, Jock McFadyen, Ronald Morgan, Grace Oscroft, Henry Silk, Harold Steggles, Walter Steggles & Albert Turpin.
The book will include a Prologue with paintings by nineteenth century artists and an Epilogue with works by artists painting the East End streets today including Nicholas Borden, Peta Bridle, Eleanor Crow, Adam Dant, Marc Gooderham, Joanna Moore & Lucinda Rogers.
I shall be opening the Write Idea Festival at the Idea Store in Whitechapel in November with an illustrated lecture on the artists in EAST END VERNACULAR and we are working with Hatchards to promote the book in the West End. There are forthcoming exhibitions this autumn of East London Group paintings at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow and at Southampton City Art Gallery where we will be doing EAST END END VERNACULAR events. Additionally, Townhouse in Spitalfields will be hosting a new Doreen Fletcher exhibition in October.
Consultants to the book include: Fiona Atkins, an expert on 20th century British Art and curator of Doreen Fletcher’s debut exhibition, David Buckman, author of From Bow to Biennale which rescued the East London Group from obscurity, Vicky Stewart, the genius researcher who discovered the Spitalfields Nippers and Alan Waltham who is the authority on the East London Group.
The book is designed by Friederike Huber, the distinguished book designer who has previously designed Brick Lane, East End, London Life, Spitalfields Nippers, Travellers Children in London Fields & Underground for Spitalfields Life Books.
Over the next week, I shall be publishing features about some of the artists from EAST END VERNACULAR
John Allin – Spitalfields Market, 1972
Pearl Binder – Aldgate, 1932 (Courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute)
James Boswell – Petticoat Lane (Courtesy of David Buckman)
Roland Collins – Brushfield St, Spitalfields, 1951-60 (Courtesy of Museum of London)
Alfred Daniels – Gramaphone Man on Wentworth St
Anthony Eyton , Christ Church Spitalfields, 1980
Doreen Fletcher – Turner’s Rd, 1998
Geoffrey Fletcher – D.Bliss, Alderney Rd 1979 (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Barnett Freedman– Street Scene. 1933-39 (Courtesy of Tate Gallery)
Noel Gibson – Street Scene in Poplar (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Charles Ginner – Bethnal Green Allotment, 1947 (Courtesy of Manchester City Art Gallery)
Elwin Hawthorne – Trinity Green Almshouses, 1935
Rose Henriques – Coronation Celebrations in Challis Court, 1937 (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Dan Jones – Brick Lane, 1977
Leon Kossoff – Christ Church Spitalfields, 1999/2000 (Courtesy of Annely Juda Fine Art, London)
Cyril Mann – Christ Church seen over bombsites from Redchurch St, 1946 (Courtesy of Piano Nobile Gallery)
Jock McFadyen – Aldgate East
Grace Oscroft – Old Houses in Bow, 1934
Henry Silk – Snow, Rounton Rd, Bow
Harold Steggles – Old Ford Rd c.1932
Walter Steggles – Canal at Mile End
Albert Turpin, Columbia Market, Bethnal Green
Click here to preorder a copy of EAST END VERNACULAR for £25
Two Lost Breweries Of Whitechapel
Within living memory, Whitechapel was home to the Albion and the Blue Anchor Brewery, two of the largest breweries in the country, premises for Watney Mann and Charringtons respectively. Photographer Philip Cunningham‘s grandfather worked at The Albion brewery and it became his melancholy duty to record both breweries in the eighties at the point of their demise. (Accompanying text also by Philip Cunningham.)
The Albion Brewery in the nineteenth century
My grandfather was a train driver until the day he was discovered to be colour blind, when he was sacked on the spot. He then became a drayman and – apart from two world wars – spent the rest of his working life at the Albion Brewery in Whitechapel. He was one of the first draymen to drive a motorised vehicle, a skill which saved his life in WWI.
The brewery started trading in 1808 and although by 1819 it was under the control of Blake & Mann, by 1826 it was in the exclusive ownership of James Mann. In 1846, Crossman and Paulin became partners to form Mann, Crossman & Paulin Ltd. The brewery was re-built in 1863, becoming the most advanced brewery of that time, producing 250,000 barrels a year.
Stables were built on the east side of Cambridge Heath Rd with a nosebag room containing in excess of one hundred and fifty nosebags, each filled by a metal tube from the store above. The former Whitechapel workhouse in Whitechapel Rd was used for the bottling plant, but when this proved to be too small it was moved to a site on Raven Row, two hundred yards south.
In 1958, the company merged with Watney Combe & Reid to become Watney Mann Ltd. In 1978, a spokesperson for Grand Metropolitan the corporate owner who acquired Watney declared, ‘The bottling plant has a very strong future as a distribution and bottling centre for the GLC area and parts of Southern England.’ Yet the plant was closed in 1980 with a loss of two hundred jobs after the building was declared unsafe and too costly to repair. Keg filling transferred to Mortlake, the bottling plant became a distribution centre and the brewery was shut down in 1979. The buildings on the Whitechapel Rd were converted to flats and the rest of the site is now occupied by Sainsbury’s.
Gates of the Blue Anchor Brewery
In 1757, John Charrington moved his brewing business from Bethnal Green to the Mile End Rd. This was the Blue Anchor Brewery, and John Charrington’s brother Harry lived next to the brewery in Malplaquet House from about 1790 until his death in 1833.
The brewery was built on Charrington Park, extending for sixteen acres behind the malt stores. Some land was sold off for building and a section was given to St. Peter’s Church, while the remainder was used for cooperages and for stables housing one hundred horses and a blacksmith’s forge. There were also coppersmiths, tinsmiths, gasfitters, millwrights, hoopers, engineers, and carpenters with a timber store and saw pit. The hop store was a spacious darkened chamber one hundred feet long, filled from floor to ceiling with hops, and the odour was overpowering.
The Blue Anchor brewery became the second largest in London producing 20,252 barrels of beer a year. In the nineteenth century, steam engines were installed which ran until 1927, when they were replaced by electric power. During the Second World War, half the lorry fleet was commandeered for the army.
Yet in 1967, the company merged with Bass to become Charrington Bass and later Bass Ltd – the largest brewing company in the country. The last brew at Charringtons was in 1975 and distribution was then moved to Canning Town. A new administration block was built at a cost of three and a half million, only to be demolished for a retail park.
Photographs copyright © Philip Cunningham
You may also like to take a look at
Philip Cunningham’s London Docks
Philip Cunningham’s East End Portraits
More of Philip Cunningham’s Portraits
Yet More Philip Cunningham Portraits
Philip Cunningham at Mile End Place
