So Long, Naseem Khan OBE
Today we pay tribute to Naseem Khan OBE who died yesterday at the age of seventy-eight. Naseem will be long remembered in the East End for her stirling work as Chair of the Friends of Arnold Circus, masterminding the restoration of the park and bandstand on the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch.
Behind this lyrical, quintessentially English image of a little girl surrounded by carnations in a cottage garden in Worcestershire lies an unexpected story – because this is a photogaph of Naseem Khan whose father was Indian and mother was German. They met in London and married in 1935, and Naseem was born in 1939. When the war came they could not return either to India, which was in the early throes of partition, or Germany which was under the control of Adolf Hitler, so they went to live in rural Worcestershire for the duration where Naseem’s mother was able to maintain a discreet profile, concealing her true nationality and passing as French.
These were the uneasy circumstances of Naseem’s origin yet they granted her a unique vision of society which informed her life’s work in all kinds of creative ways – including becoming Head of Diversity at the Arts Council and subsequently Chair of the Friends of Arnold Circus, the group responsible for the rescue and sympathetic renovation of the neglected park and bandstand at the centre of the Boundary Estate.
Naseem’s father, Abdul Wasi Khan was a doctor from Seoni, the eldest of ten in a struggling family who won an award from a foundation in Hyderabad to study in London where he completed a further three degrees, qualifying as the highest level of surgeon. Yet, as an Indian, discrimination prevented him practicing his expertise in this country at that time. Naseem’s mother, Gerda Kilbinger came to study English at a college in London and her best friend at the language school was dating an Indian doctor who was reportedly “so handsome, so smart.” However, when Gerda finally met this paragon who was to be her future husband she exclaimed “Ach, is that what the fuss is all about?” Gerda may have been initially unimpressed by Wasi’s diminutive stature, which matched her own, yet it was only the first of his qualities that she noticed, drawing them together them as a from couple from the margins in British society.
“They were very concerned that I and my brother be accepted, and they thought the best way to achieve that was to send us to boarding school. But at Roedean, where Home Counties girls were sent – destined to be secretaries at the Foreign Office before they found a suitable young man to marry – I was like a fish out of water,” admitted Naseem, speaking softly with sublime confidence yet without any shred of resentment, “My best friends were a small group of Jewish girls.”
“At the end of the war, my mother got permission to go and find her parents in Germany and it was very shocking, the damage, despair and the demoralisation. I was particularly impressed by my grandfather, a man of great integrity, and I would take my own children each year for open house on his birthday. He used to make a great soup, and members of the local football team and the mayor’s office would come. He would garden all summer long in his allotment and do metalwork in the winter. He had just a few good books and a few pieces of good furniture and I always liked that feeling, of having nothing superfluous.”
Blessed with a modest temperament and sharp intelligence, Naseem graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and pursued a wide-ranging career as a journalist. She was among those who launched Notting Hill’s black newspaper The Hustler before becoming theatre editor at Time Out when the new experimental theatre erupted in Britain. Invited by the Arts Council to research aspects of immigrant culture, she left her job to write a report entitled The Arts Britain Ignores, a re-examination of what was considered as legitimate English culture which became a cornerstone of policy and led to a further career for Naseem at the Arts Council. “It was an important period of recognition of difference, striving to find a world in which all sides are possible, contained and honoured,” admitted Naseem in quiet reflection.
For twenty-five years, Naseem lived in Hampstead but when her children George and Amelia finished university, she found that her marriage had evaporated. Separating on amicable terms with her husband and splitting the proceeds of the family house, she began a new life in the East End sixteen years ago. “What I’d missed in Hampstead was diversity, a sense of community and dynamism,” she revealed to me with a weary smile one day, “And being closer to the Buddhist centre in the Roman Rd was a plus for me. When I first came to look at this terraced house beside Columbia Rd, it was summer and the little garden was an oasis and I thought, ‘This is where I could put down my new life.’ – I knew this was where I wanted to be, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I wanted to be in a place of change.”
Over five years as Chair of the Friends of Arnold Circus, Naseem created a charity with over five hundred members dedicated to bringing together the diverse community of the Boundary Estate. While the renovation of the park became the most visible aspect of the Friends’ work, all kinds of other projects including gardening and music-making still continue throughout the year. “I think my particular skill is being able to create a space in which people with different skills and different outlooks can work together and achieve what they want to,” revealed Naseem, demonstrating her innate magnanimity while thinking out loud. “I am a connector and it means recognising the synergy by which different people can come together to create something new.”
Naseem’s work contributed to a new sense of self respect and pride in the neighbourhood for the residents of the Boundary Estate. In this sense, Naseem Khan’s work in the East End was both a culmination of her personal journey, informed by her parents’ experiences, while also re-igniting the ethos of Sir Arthur Arnold who built the Estate.
She will be remembered as a notable figure in the authentic and radical tradition of social campaigners who have brought about real change for the people of the East End. Yet Naseem’s estimate of her achievement was simpler. “When you live a long time, you do a lot of things.” she assured me with a grin of self-effacing levity.
Naseem’s grandmother Maria Kilbinger with Naseem’s mother Gerda and Aunt Elsa in 1916
Naseem’s mother’s German school attendance card issued 1913
Gerda & Wasi, newly married in 1935 in Edinburgh
Naseem’s British identity card issued 1940
Naseem with her father, aged eight, 1948
Naseem’s family and neighbours in Worcestershire in 1951. Her mother Gerda stands in the centre with her father Wasi on the far right and her Uncle Mujtaba standing between them. Sitting in the centre is Naseem’s half-sister Shamim. Standing on the far left is Harold Tolly, the baker, with his wife Myfanwy, the midwife, seated on the right holding Anwar on her lap.
Naseem and her brother Anwar, 1952
Naseem at Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall, 1958
The Temptation of Buddha, Naseem is the dancer in front on the right
At a Buddhist retreat at the Upaya Zen Centre in New Mexico, 2007
Naseem Khan OBE (1939-2017)
Arnold Circus
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At Cable St Gardens
Cable St Community Gardens will open on Sunday 18th June from 10:30am – 4pm as part of London Open Garden Squares Weekend. Click here for more information.
In September 2003, photographer Chris Kelly was invited to the open day and the result was a year-long project which culminated in an exhibition and a book. Fifty-two plot holders took part, aged from seven to eighty and originating from a dozen different countries, yet all unified by a love of gardening and the need for a haven where they could cultivate flowers, grow vegetables, chat to neighbours or enjoy solitude. “Some of the old faces are no longer there,” Chris told me,“but the gardens thrive, new people have joined and it is still a magical place.”
Bill Wren – I was born in Wapping and I moved to Shadwell nine years ago. I’ve had the plot for about fifteen years. We never had a garden when I was young. The nearest I came to gardening was picking hops in Kent. Later I had a friend in Burgess Hill and I used to grow things in her garden. That’s where the greenhouse came from, I put it on the roof of the car and brought it up from Sussex. I’ve built a shed here and a pond. There are plenty of frogs and newts, and I’ve planted a bank next to the road. It’s a wildlife haven now.
Jane Sill – I was born in Liverpool. My grandfather had an allotment in County Durham and my father was a very good gardener. I helped with weeding and cultivated sunflowers. I was living in Cable Street in the late seventies in a top floor flat with no balcony. One day I went to a community festival and Friends of the Earth were offering plots here. I was given one in 1980 and I knew straight away how important it was to establish ourselves as an organisation. We’ve had a two year waiting list since 1981. At one time I was working in a Job Centre and people used to come in and put their names down for a plot.
Mohammed Rahmat Ali Pathni – I have always been a gardener. I started on my father’s land in Bangladesh and when I came to live in Birmingham in 1978 I had a garden behind the back yard. I have lived in Wapping since 1983 and started gardening in Cable Street ten years ago. I’m enjoying myself and it helps my frozen shoulder. I taught my children to garden and my wife often works here too. Many gardeners provide food for other people and I regularly give vegetables to friends. I also write poetry which is printed in the Eurobangla News Weekly, and I am a member of a writers’ group.
Alison Cochran – I moved to Shadwell five years ago because of the allotments and I live just across the road. I noticed them when I was living in Bethnal Green. I was born in Salisbury on a hill fort. I was keen on gardening when I was a child but when I came here I hadn’t gardened for years. I knew I wanted lots of flowers, but now I also grow salad vegetables and leeks, tomatoes, carrots and radishes. The soil is wonderful, everything seems to thrive here. I’ve used Victorian bricks for the paths because I wanted my plot to be in keeping with nearby housing.
Monir Uddin – I’ve lived in the borough for twenty years and I’ve gardened here for eight or nine years. The plot was completely wild at first. I had to uproot everything and it took about two years to get the soil right. I used to grow about sixty different plants and vegetables, including huge pumpkins. I love experimenting with plants and growing them for their medicinal properties. I’m a photographer and I also wanted to produce plants to photograph. I’ve done many different types of work including weddings and portraits. I was involved in the Bollywood film industry, I’ve photographed celebrities and at one time I had a restaurant.
Agatha Athanaze – I’ve been gardening here for twelve years. I was born in Dominica and came to Tower Hamlets in 1961. I’ve done different jobs. I’ve been a machinist and a cleaner. I live in Wapping now. I had a garden in Dominica so I did have some experience. The vegetables came first – I grow cabbages, onions, spring onions, runner beans, carrots, tomatoes, rhubarb and kidney beans. I like flowers too. I’ve ordered roses from Holland and from Spalding. I just like to come here and grow things. There are two benches but I haven’t time to sit down.
John Kelly – I was born in Cork City and I wasn’t a gardener. I came to this country in 1943 to work in the construction industry and started gardening as a hobby and to feed the family. I’ve had the plot here for seventeen years. I didn’t know much but I picked it up as I went along. I’ve always grown vegetables, never flowers. I can’t spend too much time here because I have to look after my wife and I have health problems too. I hate the sight of weeds but I don’t throw them out. I leave them on the ground to let them rot and they form green manure.
Manda Helal – I’m from Hertfordshire and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty-six years. I’ve always been keen on gardening. We had a big garden when I was a child and I was given a section of my own. I’ve had my plot here for three years. My flat in Whitechapel is small and dark, so it’s wonderful to come here. The wheels are a frame for pumpkins. Squashes and pumpkins are so versatile. I grow artichokes and rocket, garlic, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach and climbing purple beans. I’ve taught pottery in the borough for years and more recently I became a compost educator for the Women’s Environmental Network.
John Stokes – I’ve been gardening at Cable Street since I retired six years ago. I asked one of the nuns in the convent across the road and she said the allotments were for local people. I had no experience but I was brought up on a farm and I found I had an instinct for gardening. I came over from Ireland fifty years ago. I worked for London Transport for thirty-six years and missed only nine days. Now I’m at the gardens almost every day in summer and twice a week in winter. I grow vegetables for myself and my cousin and an aunt.
Anna Gaudion – I was born in Guernsey. I’ve lived in Stepney for the last ten years and I work as a midwife in Peckham. I was brought up in the country and I love being outside, hearing birds and growing things. I like allotments too, even just seeing them from trains. I’ve had this plot for three years now. My shed is made from a packing case used to take an object abroad from the British Museum where I was a curator. I enjoy cultivating flowers so I planted a nature garden. I share my plot with Claire who grows vegetables. Mine is the higgledy-piggledy part.
Andy Pickin – I grew up in Finchley and we moved to Shadwell twenty years ago. We spent eight years in Huntingdon when the firm moved there but most of us came back to London. I wanted an allotment because I’d always had great fun sharing one with my dad. I’ve had the plot for fourteen years. I grew vegetables because money was tight and the first year’s crop was fantastic. Our thirteen children all liked coming here when they were young. The older ones grow their own vegetables now. My wife likes the gardens too, she knows I sometimes come here to get away from the telly or the kids arguing.
Robin & Maria Albert – Robin was in catering before becoming a gardener eight years ago. He was born in Mile End and he’s lived in London all his life. I was born in London too and brought up in Margate. My family is always trying to persuade us to move out to Kent but we like living in Bethnal Green. We grow flowers at home but we wanted somewhere separate for vegetables. The fact that everything is organic is part of the appeal. Producing your own pure food is very satisfying. We have some flowers too and a pond that attracts frogs. I can’t do so much now but I still find gardening very therapeutic.
Ray Newton – I’ve always grown things. I share this plot with Agatha. We grow about a dozen different types of vegetables. It’s all organic. We don’t use pesticides. I retired last year from teaching business studies at Tower Hamlets College. Before that I worked in industry and at one time I was manager of a betting shop. I studied for O and A levels at evening classes and then took a degree course. I became a teacher and taught for twenty-five years. My other interests are local history and football. I’m the secretary of the History of Wapping Trust and a lifelong Millwall supporter.
Will Daly – I was a founder member of the gardens. I was in a nearby pub when Jane came in with another Irish chap and they persuaded me to have a plot. I’ve been in the borough for twenty-seven years. I was born in Ireland and I made a living salmon fishing on a tributary of the Shannon. I came to this country in 1951 and did building work. One of my brothers came over too but he missed the river and went home after a while. I still go back to Ireland but only for weddings and funerals. I can’t do very much gardening now but I love the peace of it.
Raymond Hussey – This is my second year. I live in one of the flats nearby. I’m growing vegetables and learning as I go along. What I’m most proud of is the brussels. And my runner beans were unbelievable. I don’t know whether it’s the soil or me talking to them. Weeds are a problem. Sometimes I’d like to use gallons of weedkiller but we’re not allowed. So I come in and have a chat. I call them everything but weeds. I was born on one of the estates off Brick Lane. I’ve done lots of things including acting. In my last job I was a dustman but I got trapped by the lorry. I still can’t do heavy work so the plot’s a bit of a mess but it’s my little world and I love it.
Robin, Yvonne and Katie Guess – We live at the other end of Cable Street. There’s a small courtyard garden but Yvonne and I were used to growing fruit and vegetables before we lived in London. We love soft fruit, we had a huge crop last year. We grow several vegetables and Yvonne has planted a mixed flower and herb bed. Our daughter Katie likes planting and picking but not weeding. We’re both from the south-east. I’ve been in the East End since 1968 and I worked on the Isle of Dogs as a quality control chemist. Now I’m with the Music Alliance in Oxford Street dealing with composer copyright.
Carl Vella – I came to Tower Hamlets from Malta in 1950 and worked for the NHS, mostly as a fitter and stoker. I’m retired and since I took over the plot four years ago I like to come here every day. I grow mostly vegetables – potatoes and cabbages. I’m on my own now so I give a lot of produce away to an elderly neighbour. I live in the flats nearby and there’s no garden. Coming here stops me getting fed up. I take my dog for a walk, go to the bookie’s and come here. I’d like to bring Pedro more often but he won’t stay in one place.
Sister Elizabeth O’Connor – Our Order has been part of the local community since 1859 and I came to the convent in 1949. After the houses here were demolished the site became a dumping ground until Friends of the Earth initiated the gardens project. When I retired from teaching in 1991, I started gardening here. All the sisters appreciate home grown vegetables and having fresh flowers for the chapel. As a child in County Clare I enjoyed helping my father in our kitchen garden. Apart from the practical use, the gardens are a great place for breaking down barriers and it’s especially good that women can feel safe here on their own.
Graham Kenlin – I was born in Bermuda. My father was a navy chef and had a land-based job working for an admiral. We came back to England when I was four and I grew up in Hackney. I’ve lived in Wapping for thirty-eight years and I’ve had a plot here for about fifteen years. My family have always had allotments. It’s very relaxing but I’m a lazy gardener. I’m an archaeologist and I work abroad sometimes so the plot gets neglected. I’ve had the odd good year but normally I do just enough to stay credible. I like growing large weeds, anything that’s interesting.
Sheila McQuaid – I came across the gardens at an open day. It was such an oasis of green and calm that I put my name down on the spot. Gardening is in the family. My parents were horticulturalists and I grew plants as a child but I’ve only become really interested in the last ten years. We decided on fruit because it’s expensive, especially if you want organic, and it doesn’t need constant attention. I was born and brought up in Cornwall and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty-five years. I’m a housing adviser for Camden Council and I work for Stitches in Time on community textile projects.
Anna Girvan and John Griemsman – We’ve had the plot for about ten years. We’re in a 10th floor flat in Limehouse and we wanted somewhere to spend time outside and to grow vegetables. I’m from Belfast and I’ve lived in Limehouse for twenty-five years. John is from Wisconsin and he’s been here for almost thirty years. I work as a librarian in the West End and John is a special needs assistant. I’m more pleased by the flowers in the end than the vegetables. My favourite is a dahlia that Annemarie gave me. It’s a beautiful purple pink and it flowers for such a long time.
Mary Laurencin – I’ve been gardening here for about ten years. A cousin asked me to help then passed the plot on to me. I’d never gardened before but I was suffering from depression and sometimes it was the only place I felt comfortable. I learned to garden mainly by watching television. I’m from St Lucia and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for forty years. I came to England in 1962 and at one time I did four jobs every day – I worked in a cafe, had a job at Sainsbury’s, I was a machinist and I did some cleaning. I grow vegetables here. I love flowers but you can’t eat flowers.
Conrad, Donald and James Korek – I garden here with my wife Catherine and our two younger sons, Donald, ten, and James, six. Our eldest boy isn’t interested now. We’ve lived in the borough for fourteen years and started gardening at Cable Street about a year after we arrived. We have a flat nearby and we like to spend time outdoors. I was born in North London and Catherine was brought up on a farm in Scotland, so she has more experience of growing food. James likes weeding and he supports Arsenal. Donald is a West Ham supporter and he’s good at picking up stones and chatting to the other gardeners.
Annemarie Cooper – I’m a supply teacher and I write poetry. I’ve had a plot since 1986. I didn’t know anything about gardening but I love nature and being close to the earth. My dad was a very good vegetable gardener. He and my grandfather shared a plot and they were always arguing about it. I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty years. When I started here I thought I wanted to grow flowers then I got into vegetables. I love growing sweet peas and big flashy dahlias. Really I like anything that deigns to grow. I enjoy growing tomatoes and digging up potatoes.
Emir Hasham – I’m on the waiting list and until I have a plot I’ll be working on the communal area. My work is computer based graphics and special effects for television and what I like about gardening is the real honest labour and getting my hands dirty. It will be great to grow my own fruit and vegetables My parents used to garden and I helped as a child. I was born in Sheffield. My mum is a Yorkshire lass and my dad is mainly Asian. I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twelve years now. I haven’t a garden at home and there’s only so much you can grow on a balcony.
Anwara Begum – I was born in Bangladesh. My father was a businessman and had some land. My seven sisters and I helped mother with the farming. We never had to buy food from the market and we sold bamboo and bananas. When I was sixteen I came to live in Tower Hamlets and ten years ago I started gardening at Cable Street. The four children helped when they were younger but now they are busy with other things. They have to study and help with the housework. I’m studying too – IT, Childcare, Maths and English. And I’m taking Bengali GCSE as well as doing voluntary work in a nursery school.
Joseph Micallef – I first came to the borough from Malta in 1955 and settled here permanently in 1961. I’ve had the plot for ten years. I didn’t know anything about gardening but my father had a farm in Malta so I knew something about agriculture. The vegetables came first and my wife likes the flowers, but I just enjoy seeing things grow and passing the time here. A lot of the produce is given away. You do tend to get too much at once. People look at the plot and think I’m an expert but I’m not, I just plant things and they grow.
Photographs copyright © Chris Kelly
To learn more about Cable Street Community Gardens or buy copies of the Cable St Gardeners book, contact Jane Sill (janesill@aol.com) or visit www.cablestreetcommunitygardens.co.uk
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The Night I Kissed Joan Littlewood
This is what happens when you try to carry a ladder the wrong way down a narrow alley, as Roy Kinnear is discovering in this frame from Joan Littlewood’s film Sparrows Can’t Sing.
You can see through the arch to Cowley Gardens in Stepney as it was in 1962. This is where Fred (Roy Kinnear’s character) lived with his mother in the film and here his brother Charlie (James Booth) turned up after two years at sea to ask the whereabouts of his wife Maggie (Barbara Windsor), finding that the old terrace in which he lived with Maggie had been demolished in his absence.
The drama revolves around Charlie’s discovery that Maggie has moved into a new tower block with a new man, and his attempts to woo her back. Perhaps there are too many improvised scenes, yet the film has a rare quality – you feel all the characters have lives beyond the confines of the drama, and there is such spirit and genuine humour in all the performances that it communicates the emotional vitality of the society it portrays with great persuasion. In supporting roles, there is Harry H. Corbett, Yootha Joyce, Brian Murphy and several other superb actors who came to dominate television comedy for the next twenty years. Filmed on location around the East End, many locals take turns as extras, including the Krays – Barbara was dating Reggie at the time – who can be seen standing among the customers in the climactic bar room scenes.
My favourite moment in the film is when Charlie searches for Maggie in an old house at the bottom of Cannon St Rd. On the ground floor in an empty room sits an Indian at prayer with his little son, on the first floor some Afro-Caribbeans welcome Charlie into their party and on the top floor Italians are celebrating too. Dan Jones, who lives round the corner in Cable St, told me that this was actually Joan Littlewood’s house where she and Stephen Lewis wrote the screenplay.
I once met Joan Littlewood at an authors’ party hosted by her publisher. She was a frail old lady then but I recognised her immediately by her rakish cap. She was sitting alone in a corner, being ignored by everyone, and looking a little lost. I pointed her out discreetly to a couple of fellow writers but, too awestruck by her reputation, they would not dare approach. Yet I loved her for her work and could not see her neglected, so I walked over and asked if I could kiss her. She consented graciously and, once I had explained why I wanted to kiss her – out of respect and gratitude for her inspirational work – I waved my pals over. We enjoyed a lively conversation but all I remember is that as we said our goodbyes, she took my hand in hers and said ‘I knew you’d be here.’ Although she did not know me or my writing, I understood what she meant and I shall always remember the night I kissed Joan Littlewood.
Watching Sparrows Can’t Sing again recently, I decided to go in search of Cowley Gardens only to discover that it is gone. The street plan has been altered so that where it stood there is not even a road anymore. Just as James Booth’s character returned from sea to find his nineteenth century terrace gone, the twentieth century tower where Barbara Windsor’s character shacked up with the taxi driver has itself also gone, demolished in 1999. Thus, the whole cycle of social and architectural change recorded in this film has been erased.
I hope you can understand why I personally identify with Roy Kinnear and his ladder problem, it is because I too want to go through this same arch and I am also frustrated in my desire – since nowadays there is a solid wall filling the void and preventing me from ever entering. The arch is to be found beneath the Docklands Light Railway between Sutton St and Lukin St. Behind this brick wall, which has been constructed between the past and the present, Barbara Windsor and all the residents of Cowley Gardens are waiting. Now only the magic of cinema can take me there.
Rehan Jamil’s Whitechapel Portraits
Photographer Rehan Jamil was commissioned by the Survey of London to take these portraits of local people in their homes for the Histories of Whitechapel project which is currently underway, recording not just the buildings but the ways of life of the residents – just as C.R. Ashbee did in his first volume of the Survey covering Trinity Green in 1895. An exhibition of these pictures is running currently at Aldgate Coffee House, 68 Whitechapel High St, E1 7PL
Tobaris Ali, Canon Street Rd – ‘I arrived in 1965 and became a volunteer at the mosque in 1976. It is a good area, good for education – I have grandchildren now and education is important’
Sabira Rouf, Royal Mint St – ‘ The older I get, the more I appreciate the area where I live. The richness of culture, diversity and community spirit is in direct contrast to the neighbouring City of London. I am grateful I am on this side.
Keith Harrington, Booth House, Whitechapel Rd – ‘We have a roof garden, it’s nice up there’
Alan Green, Victoria Park Sq – ‘I have lived here for almost twenty years now. My Dad grew up in the area before the Second World War, so it is been rather like coming home although it has changed a lot since then. I love the diversity and the real sense of pride in our history of welcoming and supporting immigrants from across the world.’
Suparna Roy Barman, Mansell St – ‘I feel at home in Whitechapel, I feel I have everything here so I can stay at home and experience everything. The city is on my door step and it is a creative area – art and culture are important to me.’
Tigs, Myrdle Court – ‘I have lived in Myrdle Court for nine years and it is a special place. There is a sense of community in the building that is rare in London.’
Anjali Chakrabarty, Whitechapel Rd – ‘I love living here, I use to work in a school close by. I went on a Silver Surfer course and now I use the computer to talk to my mother in Bangladesh.’
Beattie Orwell, Collingwood Estate – ‘I used to love Whitechapel years ago, it was lovely – lovely shops, all the stalls – we used to walk around to see if we could find a young man. My kids all went to the Brady Centre Club, they could do with them clubs now.’
The Rahman family, Vallance Rd – ‘It is very nice to live within the community, everything literally in walking distance but also very expensive and overcrowded.’
Umer Farooq, Cable St – ‘It is a ground floor flat, so I have a garden which is really nice.’
Alex Rhys-Taylor, Brune St – ‘It is a privilege to live in Whitechapel, a part of London where local history and everyday life hold answers to some of the most pressing issues of our age.’
Farid Khan, Cephas St – ‘The school and hospital are close by. There are local people I know and traditional shops for special ingredients here.’
Photographs copyright © Rehan Jamil
Click here to make your contribution to the Survey of Whitechapel
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Night At Spitalfields Market
Although they were taken only a quarter of a century ago, these photographs by Mark Jackson & Huw Davies preserved in the archive at Bishopsgate Institute, seem now to be images from the eternal night of history – with fleeting figures endlessly running, fetching and carrying, pushing barrows from the flaring lights out into the velvet blackness, where a bonfire burns beneath the great tower of Christ Church, Spitalfields, looming overhead.
Mark Jackson & Huw Davies were poets with cameras, aware that they were in an epic world with its own codes and customs, and they recognised the imperative to record it before it disappeared. No one asked them and no one paid them. As recent graduates, Mark & Huw shared a tiny flat and worked, as a courier and in a restaurant respectively, to buy film and subsidise their project. Each evening they took the last tube to Liverpool St Station and spent the night at the market, taking pictures and befriending the traders, before going straight back to work again in the morning, often without any sleep.
Like many of the most inspiring cultural projects, this remarkable body of photography was the result of individuals pursuing their own passion. Mark & Huw were committed to record what no one else was interested to look at. Neither became photographers and their greater project to record all the London markets was reluctantly abandoned when they went off to pursue other careers, but their Spitalfields Market photographs are unrivalled in the photography of markets.
Photographs copyright © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
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The Last East End Chair Frame Makers
Jim & Hales Vaughan, fifth generation furniture makers
These are the last days of the last chair frame makers in the East End. Within a matter of weeks, brothers Jim & Hales Vaughan of H Vaughan Ltd will retire after a lifetime making bespoke chair frames, closing their old factory situated in the last shipwright’s loft in Blackwall, prior to redevelopment. So it was my privilege to pay a visit, making the acquaintance of Jim & Hales and photographing their premises as a record for posterity.
When you step off the Dockland Light Railway in Blackwall these days, you find yourself surrounded by a forest of ugly towers that has grown in recent years, casting the location into anonymity – as if you have arrived in any fast-growing, boom and bust economy on the planet where buildings are thrown up and torn down with alacrity.
Yet in a narrow side street, beside a closed down pub, sits a small brick-built Victorian factory with a decorative gable and cornice, lettered H VAUGHAN LTD. Here, you step through a cobbled yard into a modest workshop with a pitched roof supported by huge wooden beams and punctuated by tall glass panels flooding the factory with sunlight. Here are the last hand made chair frames ready to be collected by their customers and whisked away to the upholsterers. Here are the remaining pieces of old heavy machinery awaiting removal. Here is the store room, hung with myriad wooden patterns for more than forty years of chair making. Here is the wood store, with a depleted stock of beech, oak and walnut planks.
Here I met James & Hales Vaughan who have run the firm in recent years with the help of Jim’s sons, Paul & Michael. Fortunately, they were happy to take a break from clearing out the factory to chat to me and have their portraits taken. In the front office, I found ledgers containing designs for furniture stretching back through the last century, while in the drawing office cabinets overflowed with working drawings produced by generations of chair frame makers.
This is a story that stretches back even further than you might imagine. Shoreditch and Bethnal Green were traditionally the centre of the furniture and cabinet making trade in the East End and this is where H Vaughan started at the beginning of the last century. Yet even before this there was Edward Vaughan, Cabinet Maker, born in 1857 and before that Henry Vaughan, Cabinet Maker & Wholesale Furniture Manufacturer, born in 1818. Behind them were generations of Silk Dressers and Fan Makers, for this is a Huguenot family that has prospered in London by pursuing an artisan tradition through the centuries until the present day.
As the last sawdust settled upon H Vaughan Ltd, Jim Vaughan sat in his office and told me his story while his brother Hales listened from the next room, popping in to deliver an intermittent commentary, and I could not escape the realisation that I was hearing the poignant epilogue to five generations of furniture makers and the end of this particular industry in the East End.
“My grandfather started the firm in 1902, everyone used to call him Jim Vaughan but in fact he was Herbert Vaughan. At that point it was a trade mill, they used to supply the components for settee and chair frames to upholsterers, and they used to supply the components for cupboards and chest of drawers. I remember my father making the curved fronts for chests. At first, they were in Hoxton Sq then Redchurch St, then Brick Lane before we came here. We were bombed out of Redchurch St in the Second World War and when my father (he was Herbert Vaughan as well) got the premises in Brick Lane after the war, he managed to get the contract to make frames for utility furniture – you had to have a special certificate to do it and he was one of the few frame makers that got that. Then he had the idea of making copies of furniture and that was how we became bespoke chair frame makers.
I started off to be a Quantity Surveyor and lasted about a year. I could not stand the night classes and so in 1964 my dad said, ‘Would you like to join in the business?’ and I said ‘Yeah, Why not?’ My brother Hales is older than me, but it was quite a few years later that he joined. He had done an Engineering degree and was working on submarine cables but they did not have much work for him to do. It was government contract work, an odd system which consisted mostly of writing reports. So when the summer break came, my father said to him, ‘Would you like to try working for us for a bit?’ That was in 1969 and he has been here ever since. Our sister Rosemary worked here in the office for a little while too.
When I came here, I had never worked in wood before and I never got on with woodwork at school, I did not enjoy the joints, doing mortice and tenons by hand. So I started off in the office and then I worked in the factory sweeping up and ‘pulling out’ timber from the back of the machine. I used to get all the wood chips fly all over me! From there, I progressed to the bands aw then I did some frame making. Slowly but surely we started losing staff and we could not replace them. So we let the firm get smaller and smaller until I ended up running the mill with my son while, in the making shop, we had two makers and my brother Hales doing the design work and some of the tricky machining that no-one else can do. Any machinery problems Hales, can sort it out.
In 1973, our premises in Brick Lane were pulled down. We got compensation in as much as they paid for all the removal expenses and for getting this factory wired. Before we moved out, someone came round from the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society and they documented our old factory. This is luxury to what we used to have in Brick Lane – all the timber was kept outside in an alleyway and we had to chop it down to size, working outside in all weathers even when it was pouring with rain and the wind blowing. We had a sanding shop the size of this office with a big belt sander and dolly sanders and that room would get filled up with sawdust so it was like a fog in there, because there was no extraction. That was how it always was.
When we were in Brick Lane, we were supplying manufacturing upholsterers – small upholsterers that would have half a dozen three piece suites. that was one of the bread-and-butter things that we used to do all the time, and we used to do some work for bigger companies where we would supply fifty tub chairs or a dozen chesterfields at a time. We used to have a full sized removal lorry of furniture frames go out every week as regular as clockwork.
When I first started in Brick Lane, every shop there was something to do with wood and the furniture industry. Hales & I used to collect our timber in a hand cart and wheel it back to the factory. I used to go up the road for all our nails and screws. You would go in there and say, ‘Can I have two pound of nails?’and they would weigh them out for you on the scales, that was ow it was done. I used to pop over to Nichols & Clarke for nuts and bolts. We used to get our polishes at Rustins on the corner of Virginia Rd run by a little old lady with pebble glasses and we went to for carriage bolts to Lewis & Sons in the Hackney Rd. We had a wood carver in the Sunbury Workshops in Swanfield St and a wood turner in Redchurch St.
Once we moved down here to Blackwall, we were still doing a fair amount. We used to do fifty office swivel chairs at a time but slowly that dwindled off and then we were doing a lot of Knoll settees. At the moment, the popularity seems to be for settees with turned legs but over the years it has been getting quieter and quieter as people on the industry are retiring, like we are now. The demand is not there any more. Getting bespoke upholstery done is quite expensive and it is a throwaway society we have now. People think nothing of spending two or three thousand pounds on a three piece suite, having it two or three years and then throwing it away – not having it re-upholstered. It is the modern trend for everything. Our furniture frames and made to last. We do not actually put a stamp on them that says they are guaranteed for life but they will last a lifetime.
Within the next two to three months, we are closing the business down and retiring. We are just clearing out all the old machinery and are getting rid of the pattern frames. We have sold this building and it will be redeveloped. We have rented a container in Rochester and we are going to store our drawings there for a year in case any of our bespoke customers want them but, after that year, it will be the end.”
Jim Vaughan at the rip saw – ‘I’ve been in sawdust all my life’
Jim Vaughan’s son Paul – sixth generation furniture maker
Fifty years of patterns for chair frames
Ledgers with records of all the designs produced in the recent generations
Cabinets full of a lifetime’s worth of working drawings for chair frames
Hales Vaughan in the Drawing Office
Designs by Charlie Addiman
Scrapbook of designs by Charlie Addiman
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Trinity Green Almshouses Are Saved
Thanks in no small part to the large number of letters of objection, not least those written by you the readers of Spitalfields Life, Tower Hamlets Council refused Sainsbury’s proposal for a twenty-eight storey tower of luxury flats overshadowing Christopher Wren’s magnificent Grade I Trinity Green Almshouses in Whitechapel, last winter and this week – in an extraordinary development – Sainsbury’s announced they have abandoned the plan for the tower entirely. This unexpected and welcome declaration may be explained by the fact that Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, refused to use his executive powers to ‘call in’ the planning application and override local democracy, as his predecessor Boris Johnson did with the cases of the Spitalfields Fruit & Wool Exchange and Norton Folgate.
(Click this image to enlarge)
Trinity Green Almshouses in Mile End survive because some illustrious friends saved these distinguished and benign examples of social housing, which were built at the end of the seventeenth century under the supervision of Sir Christopher Wren.
CR Ashbee, founder of the Guild of Handicrafts at Essex House, was so dismayed to see the destruction of a palace in Bow which once belonged to James I, he launched a campaign in 1895 to rescue Trinity Green Almshouses when demolition and redevelopment were suggested upon the implausible premise that it would be too expensive to repair the drains.
With the vocal support of William Morris, Octavia Hill, Lord Leighton, Walter Besant and many others, Ashbee succeeded in his goal and Trinity Green became the first historic building in the East End to be saved for posterity. As part of his campaign, he published a handsome monograph, surveying and recording the building in detail, from which the drawings here are reproduced. This monograph became the origin of the Survey of London which continues to this day.
CR Ashbee, saviour of Trinity Green – drawing by William Strang in 1903
Trinity Green seen from the Master’s House
Retired naval gentlemen in the club room at Trinity Green
Statue of Captain Richard Naples
Elevation on Mile End Rd
A game of draughts
Model ship from the frontage on Mile End Rd
Cat at the foot of the statue of Captain Maples
Click here to learn more about the FRIENDS OF TRINITY GREEN
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