At Sangorski & Sutcliffe
As a twenty-one year old photojournalist, Monty Meth visited Sangorski & Sutcliffe, traditional bookbinders, and took portraits of the craftsmen and women at their workshop in Poland St, published in ‘The Sphere’ in September 1947. Remarkably, Sangorski & Sutcliffe are still in business today, producing bindings in the time honoured-fashion and operating now from premises in Victoria.
Head of the firm, Mr Stanley Bray, works on the special binding for ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ a task which it will take him ten years to complete. Around him can be seen the original drawings of the two previous bindings which were lost – the first in the Titanic disaster and the second during the London Blitz. The covers will contain one thousand and fifty-one jewels inset into the leather, use five thousand pieces of leather and contain one hundred square feet of gold leaf. The completed book will be a fine and rare specimen of the English bookbinder’s art.
Cutting the edges of the book – the instrument being operated by the craftsman in this picture is a miniature “plough,” whose accuracy and fineness of finish are essential to good work.
The sections of the book are sewn on a frame. This type of frame is essentially the same as those in use for hundreds of years in the bookbinding craft. Each section – usually of eight or sixteen pages – is sewn to the cords singly, until the whole book has been built up ready for the boards or covers to be added.
Sewing in the headband – this band, woven in at the top and bottom of the book will protect it against rough usage in handling on the bookshelves. In the finished volume, both the headbands are covered by the leather binding. The headbands are made up of silks in contrasted colours.
The cords which bind the sections of the book are frayed out so that they can be laced into the boards which form the covers. The smoothness of the finish of the leather depends upon this operation.
Cutting up a skin for leather back and corners. The original, rich, dark-red, native-tanned Nigerian goatskin, almost identical to the Morocco used by French and English master-binders of the eighteenth century, is now used for binding many books in this country today. The leather is usually British-dyed. Here it is being cut to size for back and corners ready for paring, as shown below. The grain of the leather adds to the finish of the book.
Before being pasted to the back and corners of the book, the leather has to be pared to a suitable thickness. The leather must be capable of being turned neatly over all the joints and it must also be of uniform thickness. Hence it is pared by an expert on a stone, a task which calls for great skill and sureness of touch.
The bands on the back of the book are sharpened. Before a book is lettered, the expert finisher secures as much definition as possible. Later he will add lines across the back which will add greatly to the general attractiveness of the book.
The leather margin of the front cover is decorated with gold leaf ornamentation. This work is undertaken by a finisher, who is responsible for all the tooling on the leather. He is the aristocrat of the bindery, and upon his invention in design and skill in execution the final appearance of the book depends. The craftsman above is considered by experts to be one of the best in the country today.
A very important feature of bookbinding is the restoration of old books – they come from rare bookshelves and most of them are old classics. Under an expert craftsman’s hand, they will regain all their old charm and use.
The completed volumes, hand-produced in every binding detail, receive their final pressing from twelve to twenty-four hours. After that, they will be ready to sustain the roughest usage. This massive press is over one hundred years old and is still in full use.
At one time, Britain enjoyed a great reputation for the craftsmanship of our hand bookbinders. From Cromwellian times onwards right up to the late-Victorian days, leather-bound books lined the shelves of our forefathers. Very few firms remain in this country to pursue this ancient craft, but amongst those which remain, Sangorski & Sutcliffe hold a very high place – in fact, amongst connoisseurs of bookbinding they rank at the very top. The binding of a book necessitates thirty-eight different operations – as yet, no machine has been invented which competes in skill and artistry with the art of the hand bookbinder. At their workshops in Poland St, craftsmen have prepared books for many exhibitions since 1904 – and as proof that this kind of bookbinding is still in demand by book lovers all over the world, sixty-five per cent of theoutput is for export.
You may also like to read my profile of Monty Meth
Monty Meth, Photographer & Journalist
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Roy Wild, Loving Son
Roy with his Mum & Dad in the forties
Previously in these pages, I have reported Roy Wild’s stories of working at the Bishopsgate Goodsyard and his family’s hop-picking adventures, but the last time I visited him Roy wanted to talk to me about his beloved parents and tell me their stories.
“My father Andrew Earnest Wild was born in 1907 in Clerkenwell, within the sound of Bow Bells, and he lived in Bastwick St (known as ‘the Bass’) off Central St. His father was Andrew Benjamin Wild and his mother was Ellen Leach. He was the eldest of four brothers and two sisters – Emmy and one he lost – and another half sister, Maggie.
When he was sixteen, he falsified his age and joined up with the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent, based in Maidstone. The Ministry of Defence sent me his pay book and what have you. It says, ‘A hardworking clean and sober man, of smart appearance, he can be trusted to carry out his duties without supervision, intelligent and reliable, a good type of man.’
He put down 1906 but he was actually born in 1907, on 13th of September. He was shipped to India and was there for the whole of his service, which was I think eleven years, in Madras and Calcutta. He took up boxing there, became regimental champion and fought in the all-India finals. I have a solid silver medal that he won in Madras for bayonet fighting. It is my most prized possession, upstairs in my jewellery box.
My Dad was a bit of a rough handful before he mellowed. One of my relations who knew my Dad when they were young told me, ‘I saw your Dad have a fight down the Bass, he knocked the guy out and grabbed him by the back of his neck and dragged him across the tramlines for the tram to run over him.’
I do remember once we were on a bus, Dad and I, sitting on the long seat next to where the bus conductor stood. On the seat was one of those paper bags for copper coins and I picked it up, and was looking at it when the conductor came along. He asked me, ‘What are you doing with that?’ I did not know what to say so the old man said, ‘What’s the matter?’ The conductor asked, ‘Does he usually pick up things that don’t belong to him?’ So Dad told him I was only a child and grabbed him by the throat. He almost threw the conductor off the bus, that was the type of character he was. When it came to protecting his children, he would not stand for anything.
When he first came home from India, my Dad worked on the underground, laying lines, but then he left that and went to be a Hoffman presser in Putney. He was there for some years and became foreman until he was called up in 1939, when I was two years old. His guvnor contacted the authorities and said that he was needed because of his job – as well as being an ARP warden, looking out for overhead bombers, so he got exempted from the Second World War. But then they brought somebody in and gave him a higher position than my Dad. Now, he was a no-nonsense guy my Dad and a lot of it I have inherited from him. This guy had never been in the cleaning business, so they put him under my dad’s wing, yet gave him a higher position than my Dad and more money. Dad was a foreman at the time, he said, ‘You expect me to teach him and when I’ve taught him, he’ll be ordering me about.’ So there was a dispute and after years there, ‘That’s it, I’m out of here,’ he said – simple as that.
Instead, he went and worked as a Hoffman presser for a Jewish guy in Victoria St, SW1. My Dad was good at what he did, he used to press all my clothes when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties. It was quite a prestigious shop, by the name of Jones, and lots of stars would go in. Dad used to tell me that, when you press a suit, you always go through the pockets first, in case there are any matches in there, especially red top matches, which could start a terrible fire with the cleaning spirit. In one pocket, Dad found a gold ring which belonged to the Bishop of Westminster and he gave it to his guvnor and received some sort of commendation for it.
After he left the pressing job, Dad did various jobs before he went on the railway, working for London & North Eastern Railway at Pedley St off Vallance Rd. He was there for quite some years, became the official for the National Union of Railwaymen and organised the annual beanos with all the guys he worked with. I used to take friends of mine from Bishopsgate depot where I worked and we had a jolly boys outing down to Margate. When he retired, my Dad did night work and a couple of cleaning jobs in the City. He was very fastidious and he enjoyed good health. He was always down Columbia Road Market. My Dad, he loved the flowers yet he never really had a garden. When we were in Northport St, there was a backyard, where he had a few chickens and his garden consisted of no more than a window box.
He was never out of work and always provided for us. Those years that we lived in Northport St were the years of the parties at our house, where people would come out of the pubs, carrying the booze home, having a ‘Moriarty’ as it was known. In those days, we had nothing else other than a piano. Across the road from us was a pub called the Rushton Arms. All the street and surrounding streets used to drink in there on a Friday and Saturday night, and the kids sat outside with a packet of crisps and a glass of lemonade and an arrowroot biscuit. They used to get hold of a pint glass and rub that on the pavement keep rubbing it until a hole was formed and, you can imagine what happened, when it was refilled – all the beer ran everywhere. Then, one night, there was an almighty bang when it took a hit from a bomb, and there was not much left of the old Rushton Arms.
My Mum, Rosina Florence Wild, was born in 1911 in Clerkenwell, in Galway St and grew up there. She knew Dad’s family in Bastwick St and when Dad went to join up for the army, she was just twelve. But when he was demobbed and came home from the army aged twenty-four, she was a young lady and a good dancer. My Mum was a ‘Charleston girl’ as they say, ‘a real flapper.’ They hit it off, and started stepping out together and got engaged. A year later they were married at St Luke’s Old St, and I was born the next year at Barts Hospital and christened in the same church. My Mum saw in the paper a house was going in Northport St, so she applied for it and we moved to Hoxton when I was a year old.
During the war years, Mum worked at Arthur Burton’s in Old St, making bandages and dressings for wounded soldiers. Mum did piecework – we pushed the pram from Northport St along New North Rd into City Road and left onto Old St. Arthur Burton’s was a big building next to Moon’s Motors, where we loaded the pram with rolls of bandages, big long strings of them. We would have bags and bags of them to be packed. I would help Mum while Dad was on night work, we would sit there during the evening by the radio, packing bandages. One load would keep us going for a couple of days, then we pushed the pram again over to Arthur Burton’s and received a pittance. It was much like hopping, but we needed the money in those days plus we were helping the war effort.
When the war came to an end, I was going to school in Whitmore St School. At eleven, some of the brainier boys went to Shoreditch Central School in Hoxton. You were considered a little bit ‘like that’ if you went to Shoreditch Central, us we went to the original Blackboard Jungle, Pitfield St School.
During those years, Mum was an early morning office cleaner at a bank in Gresham St in the City. She would start work at half past five, cleaning, dusting and emptying the waste paper baskets, and then she would come home in time to see me off to school. She would be home by about eight in the morning and would do me a packed lunch. She continued doing early morning cleaning until I started work. I said to Dad, ‘It’s not right that mum goes out the early hours of the morning,’ and he made her pack up mornings and just do evenings.
My Mum was not necessarily strong in stature but in resolve. She continued with the evening cleaning job for years – by then she must have been in her fifties I would think – until she packed up completely. We did not need the money anymore. Dad was still working and I was working and giving her a little bit out of my wages every week, so we coped fairly well. My Mum’s fridge was a bowl of water on the windowsill with a bottle of milk in it. That was how we kept the milk fresh. My Mum’s vacuum cleaner was a dustpan and brush, and my Mum’s washing machine was a copper in the scullery. In the little back room where we used to eat, there was a range and Mum used to cook on that. She would put Zebo all over it and then polish it. She worked hard on scrubbing the front steps, and she would whiten it or use red ochre, so the front steps always look nice.
One day, when he was seventy-five, my Dad went upstairs and was a bit breathless, so he saw the doctor. The doctor sent him to the hospital but they could not find out what was wrong with him. He started to lose weight and he got so frail he could not get up the stairs, and Mum had made a bed up for him downstairs. I used to come round on his appointment day and carry him out, he would only let me carry him. I put him in the car and Tony my brother, myself, and my Mum, we would take him to Bart’s Hospital. They wanted to open him up and see what the problem was. By then, he was on oxygen – a little mask he had and a canister by the bed. Dr Bennett, the consultant, he said to my dad, ‘The nurse is going to take you into the other room and I want you to blow.’ But that was just to get him out of the room, the consultant said to Tony and me, ‘We don’t know what’s wrong with your dad and he will not let us open him up to see what’s wrong, so I can only tell you your dad is going to die – and I suggest you take him home and let him die among the people that love him.’ My Mum was in the other room with him, she did not know, only his two sons. We took him home and he went downhill.
I went away to the Isle of Sheppey for the weekend with my two children. My wife and I, we came home and I called my Mum’s place, and Tony picked up the phone and I knew. I knew because Tony was there and he said, ‘Dad took a turn for the worse and he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.’ That was when the problems began really because Mum asked ‘They won’t cut him open will they, Roy?‘ and I said ‘No mum, of course they won’t.’
I tried to stop the post mortem. I went to Golden Lane to see the pathologist who was going to do it. He asked me, ‘Mr Wild, you seem adamant that you don’t want your father to receive a post mortem, why is that?’ I said ‘Well, he was terrified of going under the knife when he was alive and it would upset my mother terrible.’
‘I can understand that but there’s a time when the law has to be applied,’ he replied, ‘because your father died en route to the hospital, we have to do it.’ So they did it and on the death certificate it said ‘Sarcadosis.’ We did not know what that meant, so my brother got a medical dictionary and it means the complete breakdown of the lungs, that was why he could not breathe. Dad was buried at East Finchley Cemetery in a double plot in 1983 and the plot was held for when Mum joined him twenty-seven years later, just before her ninety-seventh birthday. You know, she was a good Mum, both of them were good parents.”
Transcript by Rachel Blaylock & Nicola Kearney
Rosina Wild – ‘My mum was a ‘Charleston girl,’ as they say – a real flapper’
Andrew Wild – ‘My Dad was a bit of a rough handful before he mellowed’
Roy Wild
At Northport St, Hoxton – (Rosina Wild is on the left)
Andrew Wild plays spoons
Rosina Wild at her flat in Old Market Sq, Bethnal Green
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Janet Brooke’s East End Shopfronts
In the eighties, Janet Brooke undertook series of prints of some favourite East End shops and a selection are currently on display at the Museum of London until 7th July
Cafe, Roman Rd
“I moved to Bow in the mid-seventies after a stint of squatting in Whitechapel and Leytonstone. I was teaching printmaking at East Ham Technical College, which became Newham Community College and then Newham College of Education before closing the Art Department in 2006. Yet, thankfully, I did manage to buy their beautiful Imperial Press made in Curtain Rd in 1832 that I used to print my linocuts. While I was teaching, I also made my own prints and in 1980, armed with a new camera, I started taking photographs and decided to use the results as inspiration for my work. So I started with a set of screenprints of the shops in Ropery St, where I lived and which I used every day.’ – Janet Brooke
MR HASLER’S SHOP (Screenprint) on the corner of Eric St and Bow Common Lane had seen better days. It was not always clear whether it was open or not, because it very dark inside with the windows boarded up. I do not remember it selling much more than newspapers and a few cigarettes, but I do remember having our Sunday paper delivered by Mr Hassler himself or, more often, by Mrs Hasler. Hasler’s is no longer a shop.
THE POST OFFICE (Screenprint) was on the opposite corner of Eric St and Bow Common Lane. It is no longer a shop.
JESSIE’S PROVISIONS (Screenprint), our local grocery store, was further down Eric St on the corner of Hamlets Way, where you could buy everything you needed including fresh bread, delivered twice a day, warm from the bakery. Jessie’s is still a grocery shop.
MICK’S GENT’S LONG HAIR STYLIST (Screenprint) was on the next block along Hamlets Way, on the corner of Mossford St. Mick was Maltese I think and claimed to be a ‘Gents Long Hair Stylist,’ although I think he was more of a traditional barber. I remember taking my son there as a small boy, he sat on a plank balanced across the arms of the barber’s chair and always chose one of the Italian styles pictured on the wall, maybe a Tony Curtis. He looked stylish afterwards but his hair soon reverted to its more usual Dennis the Menace look. Mick’s is still a barber’s shop.
THE CRYSTAL TAVERN (Screenprint) was on the other side of Hamlets Way on the corner of Burdett Rd. The sign was worn away, so it was more often referred to as ‘the dive’ or sometimes’ The Arbus Arms.’ The interior was all faded plush, gilt and mirrors with a barmaid to match.
BENNY’S (Linocut) was on Hamlets Way opposite The Crystal Tavern. It was more a hole in the wall than a shop but I bought all my fruit and vegetables there, served at first by Benny himself, sometimes his wife, then his two sons and finally their grandsons. During Apartheid, I asked where their apples came from, not wanting to buy anything from South Africa, and was always assured that they came from somewhere else but I was never convinced. The family did pretty well from the shop yet, although they had smart cars parked up the street, they never spent any money on improvements or heating in the winter. Benny’s shop is now a takeaway pizza outlet.
40 HESSEL ST (Linocut) Next I turned to Whitechapel, especially Hessel St which had lots of colourful shops that were very suitable for linocuts. They were nearly all Bangladeshi businesses with a just few remnants of the Jewish ones left but, within a couple of years they had all been homogenised by modern shop fronts, no more individually hand-painted, and sometimes misspelt signs.
69 HESSEL ST (Linocut)
LOVELEY CLOTH STORE (Linocut)
C & K GROCERS (Linocut)
BANGLADESHI STORES (Screenprint) where you could buy almost everything, including a ticket to Dhaka
ROGG’S (Linocut), round the corner in Cannon Street Row, was one of the last Jewish deli’s in the East End, where customers came from miles around to get their beigels and pickles. The site of Rogg’s is now a parking lot.
ALBAN’S LADIES HAIRDRESSING (Linocut), 65 Roman Rd, specialised in ladies hairdressing supplies and never stinted on the window display. It later became an art gallery and is now a coffee shop.
ACKERMAN’S BUTTONS LTD (Linocut), 326 Hackney Rd, was a pretty basic shop with no window display and inside just stacks of cardboard boxes of buttons and a one bar electric fire. Mr Ackerman did not waste money although I think he owned a button factory in Hackney somewhere.
BILLY’S SNACK BAR (Screenprint) was on the corner of Pritchards Rd and Emma St. It stayed the same for years and, of all the shops I have made prints of, is still there with the same name but different signage.
Images copyright © Janet Brooke
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A Bethnal Green Childhood
Linda Wilkinson, who grew up near Columbia Rd Market, recalls her family’s Sunday rituals in this extract from her forthcoming memoir of departure and return to the East End, COLUMBIA ROAD: OF BLOOD & BELONGING published by September Books on 1st June
Linda and Geoffrey outside Garcias and Daltrey in Columbia Rd in 1953
Sunday has its own rhythm and rites. After the changing of the beds mum will check that the roast is ready for the oven that the vegetables are prepared and she will, for the first time that week, sit and read a newspaper. If the weather is fine in mid-morning Nan will visit for a cup of tea, but irrespective at noon Dad will go to the pub and come home for his meal and an afternoon sleep.
Over and above all of this, the Sunday flower market takes place as it has done since the 1860s. I adore the fact that I can perch on the doorstep and watch the ebb and flow of people. Women wear the ubiquitous turbans over their hair as they purchase flowers, or bulbs. Not many men are out apart from the market traders who flirt mercilessly with the clientele, who give as good back. The hue and cry of the costers in the market is the same as many another. ‘So many for two and six,’ the numbers a moveable feast according to the season. ‘The best bargain you’ll ever have.’ Goods are sold from the pavement, having come on handcarts or in small vans. It feels warm and safe and happy, and I hug my knees and relish the entertainment.
My grandmother is upon me before I realise it. Wearing her best dress she prods me with her walking stick. Her soft white hair is piled ornately under a pearl-encrusted hairnet and outrageous earrings dance and dangle with her every movement. She is in her late seventies and she scares most people. ‘Get up dreamer, let me by.’ She pats me none too softly on the head and wanders down the passageway.
In the kitchen, I occupy my favourite spot on the floor where I can appreciate the enormity of both Nan and her personality. I love these visits.
I see her on Saturdays when we go to her flat near the Broadway Market to do her shopping, but having her here in my home feels special. I watch as she pours tea into her saucer, dunks toast into the cup and then sucks it. She has teeth, false teeth, but they sit in a handkerchief in her coat pocket. The slurping sound as she sucks the tea from the saucer is unrestrained.
‘Mum!’
‘I can’t wear the teeth all the time Bella, they rub.’
Dad, who is ever present at these visits, rattles his newspaper but remains invisible behind it.
‘Get some new ones.’
Nan seems fond of her black rubber dentures, but perhaps it’s just that she hasn’t got the hang of a new pair being free on the State.
‘Lin’s going to nursery soon,’ Mum informs her.
‘She’ll have to speak then.’
‘I can speak.’
‘Can you now?’
‘And she can read.’
‘Don’t be daft, she’s only a child.’
‘Mum taught me.’
She is unimpressed until mother snatches the newspaper from Dad and I stutter through a few sentences.
‘She’s a strange one, all that staring at you in silence, now this.’
‘She’s just a bit different.’
They drift on to conversations not connected with me and I slip back into watching them. Tony, my brother, comes in; he and Nan have a great affection for one other. He is full of the bustle of a teenager on his way to manhood and I have to sit on a chair to avoid his stomping feet. Even Dad lowers his paper and joins in until twelve o’clock chimes. Nan leaves, Dad changes to go to the pub and Mum returns to the kitchen.
Later, once Dad has returned and eaten his roast, he falls asleep on the smooth white territory of the bed where I join him. Mother sits and snoozes in the kitchen, legs propped on another chair, but Dad and I lie down. He has a smell on these afternoons, a smell that I can never forget. In contrast to the sheets it is a feast of the earth. Sweat, beer and tobacco. In his armpits the black matt of hairs curl, unlike the dark straightness on his head. There is no grey there, well perhaps a hint. Sunlight is deflected by the window of the house next door. It bounces weakly into the bedroom. The walnut veneer of the bedhead is warmed to a deep glow. I trace the black lines with a small finger. Soon he will have to wake. Soon the beer will clear from his head. It will be six o’clock and we will eat winkles, shrimps and white buttered bread. Later he will stand in the street, this summer street, and smoke in the darkness. I will sit on the window ledge next to him and listen to the soft banter that the neighbours exchange. There is no traffic and the other children race up and down. He knows that I prefer to sit close to him; there are never any admonishments to go and play.
I kneel on the bed and look down at him. The vest and pants he wears are thick. Like the sheets they have survived the rite of passage through the inferno of cleaning. Above the bed, behind the walnut, is a mantelpiece. On this stands a glass of water. I hear sounds of stirring and a kettle being filled. Gently I dip a comb into the glass. The drips fall like small crystals as I drag the teeth slowly through his hair. His eyes like mine are brown. Smiling he stays my hand.
‘All right, kid?’ I nod, and he envelopes me in a glorious hug of love and understanding.
Linda and her brother Tony, 1952
Harry & Bella Wilkinson on their wedding day, 1939
Linda’s mother and grandmother, 1932
Columbia Rd
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Remembering Joseph Grimaldi In Finsbury
Zaz the clown spins a disc for Joseph Grimaldi
Next week will see the one hundred and eightieth anniversary of the death of the world’s most famous clown, Joseph Grimaldi, on May 31st and a small group of devotees with painted faces will gather – as they do each year on the anniversary – at the former graveyard of St James’ Pentonville Rd to celebrate his memory, in the place where the bones of the great man lie interred.
The church was deconsecrated long ago and the churchyard cleared, reconstituted now as Joseph Grimaldi Park with his tombstone given pride of place in a location twenty feet from where he is actually buried. Nearby, the traffic roars up and down the Pentonville Rd with a ferocity unknown in Grimaldi’s day, yet the remains of thirteen hundred souls still lie here peacefully and, even though Grimaldi was decapitated before burial at his own request out of a morbid fear of being buried alive, his spirit becomes manifest each year when the clowns arrive to pay tribute.
On the occluded summer’s day I visited, the sun broke through as the ‘Joeys’ came stumbling in one by one, wearing their big boots, enacting their crazy poetry of gurning, and bringing delight with old gags and dumb tricks. Resplendent in a garish suit of Buchanan tartan, Mattie, the curator of the clown museum and local resident who has lived forty years years in Clerkenwell, gave a plain speech of remembrance before laying flowers for Grimaldi. At a distance, Puzzle the silent clown, wiped tears from his eyes as he stood under an umbrella in the sunlight while water pumped up through the handle cascaded down over the shade, making a suitable gesture to honour the man who developed the notion of the modern clown that is universally recognised today.
“It’s been low-key for donkeys’ years and we thought it would be nice to pay a bit more attention to it,” explained Bluebottle, rubbing his hands in delighted satisfaction at the turnout. A clown of twenty years experience, he was speaking to me as official secretary of Clowns International, the world’s largest clown organisation. By contrast, Fiasco the clown has only been doing it for six months, eagerly confiding that her sole ambition is “to bring people happiness and to entertain handicapped children.” Meanwhile, Zaz the clown who has been clowning since he was eleven and is now thirty-three, revealed that he had performed for Madonna’s children and been flown to India just to entertain at a party. And Jolly Jack confessed that he began clowning at the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and never looked back. They were a quorum of fools, and we delighted at their high jinks and idiocy.
At the entrance to Joseph Grimaldi Park, two metal coffin lids set into the ground invite you to dance upon them, triggering the sound of bells. They propose the triumph of clowning over death and offer a metaphor for the human condition – that we are all but dancing upon our graves. Clowning and mortality are inextricable in this way. We need clowns to humble us by reminding us of our essential foolishness, to encourage us to seek joy where it flies, and to confront us with our flawed humanity, lest we should make the mistake of taking ourselves too seriously.
Fans young and old gather to celebrate Joey the clown.
Mattie the clown.
Fiasco the clown with ‘Daddy.’
Bluebottle the clown.
Jolly Jack the clown.
Puzzle the clown.
Professor Geoffrey Felix’s Punch & Judy Show – Mr Punch is 355 years old this year.
Musical coffins commemorating Joseph Grimaldi and Charles Dibdin invite you to dance upon them.
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A sombre moment of remembrance at Grimaldi’s grave.
Joseph Grimaldi (18th December 1778 – 31st May 1837)
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Highdays & Holidays In Old London
With another Bank Holiday imminent, it is time for us to consider highdays & holidays in old London
Boys lining up at The Oval, c.1930
School is out. Work is out. All of London is on the lam. Everyone is on the streets. Everyone is in the parks. What is going on? Is it a jamboree? Is it a wingding? Is it a shindig? Is it a bevy? Is it a bash?
These are the high days and holidays of old London, as recorded on glass slides by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society and once used for magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute.
No doubt these lectures had an educational purpose, elucidating the remote origins of London’s quaint old ceremonies. No doubt they had a patriotic purpose to encourage wonder and sentiment at the marvel of royal pageantry. Yet the simple truth is that Londoners – in common with the rest of humanity – are always eager for novelty, entertainment and spectacle, always seeking any excuse to have fun. And London is a city ripe with all kinds of opportunities for amusement, as illustrated by these magnificent photographs of its citizens at play.
Are you ready? Are you togged up? Did you brush your hair? Did you polish your shoes? There is no time to lose. We need the make the most of our high days and holidays. And we need to get there before the parade passes by.
At Hampstead Heath, c.1910.
Walls Ice Cream vendor, c.1920.
At Hampstead Heath, c.1910.
At Hampstead Heath, c.1910.
Balloon ascent at Crystal Palace, Sydenham, c.1930.
At the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, 1896.
Christ’s Hospital Procession across bridge on St Matthews Day, 1936.
A cycle excursion to The Spotted Dog in West Ham, 1930.
Pancake Greaze at Westminster School on Shrove Tuesday, c.1910.
Variety at the Shepherds Bush Empire, c.1920.
Dignitaries visit the Chelsea Royal Hospital, c.1920.
Games at the Foundling Hospital, Bloomsbury, c.1920.
Riders in Rotten Row, Hyde Park, c.1910.
Physiotherapy at a Sanatorium, 1916.
Vintners’ Company, Master’s Installation procession, City of London, c.1920.
Boating on the lake in Battersea Park, c.1920.
The King’s Coach, c.1911.
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee procession, 1897.
Lord Mayor’s Procession passing St Paul’s, 1933.
Policemen gives directions to ladies at the coronation of Edward VII, 1902.
After the procession for the coronation of George V, c.1911.
Observance of the feast of Charles I at Church of St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, 1932.
Chief Yeoman Warder oversees the Beating of the Bounds at the Tower of London, 1920.
Schoolchildren Beating the Bounds at the Tower of London, 1920.
A cycle excursion to Chingford Old Church, c.1910.
Litterbugs at Hampstead Heath, c.1930.
The Foundling Hospital Anti-Litter Band, c.1930.
Distribution of sixpences to widows at St Bartholomew the Great on Good Friday, c.1920.
Visiting the Cast Court to see Trajan’s Column at the Victoria & Albert Museum, c.1920.
A trip from Chelsea Pier, c.1910.
Doggett’s Coat & Badge Race, c.1920.
Feeding pigeons outside St Paul’s, c.1910.
Building the Great Wheel, Earls Court, c.1910.
Glass slides copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
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Desire Paths Of The East End
In Weavers’ Fields
Who can resist the appeal of the path worn solely by footsteps? I was never convinced by John Bunyan’s pilgrim who believed salvation lay in sticking exclusively to the straight path – detours and byways always held greater attraction for me. My experience of life has been that there is more to be discovered by stepping from the tarmac and meandering off down the dusty track, and so I delight in the possibility of liberation offered by these paths which appear year after year, in complete disregard to those official routes laid out by the parks department.
It is commonly believed that the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard invented the notion of “desire paths” (lignes de désir) to describe these pathways eroded by footfall in his book “The Poetics of Space,” in 1958, although, just like the mysterious provenance of these paths themselves, this origin is questioned by others. What is certain is that the green spaces of the East End are scored with them. Sometimes, it is because people would rather cut a corner than walk around a right angle, at other times it is because walkers lack patience with elegantly contrived curved paths when they would prefer to walk in a straight line and occasionally it is because there is simply no other path leading where they want to go.
Resisting any suggestion that these paths are by their nature subversive to authority or indicative of moral decline, I prefer to appreciate them as evidence of human accommodation, coming into existence where the given paths fail and the multitude of walkers reveal the footpath which best takes them where they need to go. Yet landscape architects and the parks department refuse to be cowed by the collective authority of those who vote with their feet and, from time to time, little fences appear in a vain attempt to redirect pedestrians back on the straight and narrow.
I find a beauty in these desire paths which are expressions of collective will and serve as indicators of the memory of repeated human actions inscribed upon the landscape. They recur like an annual ritual, reiterated over and over like a popular rhyme, and asserting ownership of the space by those who walk across it every day. It would be an indication of the loss of independent thought if desire paths were no longer created and everyone chose to conform to the allotted pathways instead.
You only have to look at a map of the East End to see that former desire paths have been incorporated into the modern road network. The curved line of Broadway Market joins up with Columbia Rd cutting a swathe through the grid of streets, along an ancient drover’s track herding the cattle from London Fields down towards Smithfield Market, and the aptly named Fieldgate St indicates the beginning of what was once a footpath over the fields down to St Dunstan’s when it was the parish church for the whole of Tower Hamlets.
Each desire path tells a story, whether of those who cut a corner hurrying for the tube through Museum Gardens or of those who walk parallel to the tarmac for fear of being hit by cyclists in London Fields or of the strange compromise enacted in Whitechapel Waste where an attempt has been made to incorporate desire paths into the landscape design. I am told that in Denmark landscape architects and planners go out after newly-fallen snow to trace the routes of pedestrians as an indicator of where the paths should be. Yet I do not believe that desire paths are a problem which can be solved because desire paths are not a problem, they are a heartening reminder of the irreducible nature of the human spirit that can never be contained and will always be wandering.
The parting of the ways in Museum Gardens
The allure of the path through the trees
In Bethnal Green, hungry for literature, residents cut across the rose bed to get to the library
A cheeky little short cut
An inviting avenue of plane trees in Weavers’ Fields
A detour in Florida St
A byway in Bethnal Green
Legitimised by mowing in Allen Gardens, Spitalfields
A pointless intervention in Shadwell
Which path would you choose?
Over the hills and faraway in Stepney
The triumph of common sense in Stepney Green
Half-hearted appropriation by landscape architects on Whitechapel Waste
A joggers path in London Fields
A dog-eared corner in Stepney
The beginning of something in Bethnal Green
