Phil Maxwell At Watney Market
The markets of the East End tend to divide between those for recreational shopping at weekends and those which are weekday and utilitarian, where people seek the essentials of life at the keenest prices. Both are interesting in different ways, yet the recreational markets tend to get photographed much more than the utilitarian ones, which makes Contributing Photographer Phil Maxwell‘s pictures of Watney Market over the last thirty years especially fascinating.
Once one of the East End’s largest, Watney Market boasted an early branch of Sainsburys in 1881 – selling cheese and salt bacon to dockers – and by 1900 it was claimed there were a hundred stalls and a hundred shops. By 1928, the number of businesses had more than doubled, drawing protests from nearby churches for trading on Sundays. Yet by the sixties it was in decline and Tony Bock photographed the last days of the old market before it was redeveloped into its current form in the eighties.
Watney Market is a pedestrianised precinct now, creating an uninterrupted theatre of human life with a lively immersive atmosphere where locals feel free to linger, enjoying the socialising and banter for which East End markets are justly famous.
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
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Phil Maxwell in Bethnal Green Rd
The Artists Of Headway East
Operating for the last ten years under the auspices of Headway East, SUBMIT TO LOVE STUDIOS is a collective of self-taught artists who have all survived brain injuries. This week they are opening a shop at 93 Kingsland Rd, E2 8AG, for five days from Monday until Friday with an exhibition of works for sale and a range of activities daily.
Errol Drysdale – ‘In my mind, Art is a Godsend. It’s a peaceful thing to do.’
Jon Barry
Sandra St Hilaire – ‘I enjoy creating my Art work as I didn’t know I could draw before.’
Sam Jevon – ‘I only discovered Art after my accident, I find I have a lot of concentration and patience.’
Sean – ‘I just enjoy doing it, I’d never done it before. I don’t think about it too much. For some reason I enjoy doing oil pastels’
Brian Searle – ‘Art is about learning through opportunities when accidents come along – learning how to take that opportunity and make Art out of it. In my artist’s statement, I call it a ‘happy-accident style.’ That’s when the best Art comes along – through happy accidents.’
Nicholas Mayers – ‘Art work is a funny thing. However, you make it up as you go along.’
Cecil Waldron
Naila Ai
Chris Miller
Freddie Irshad – ‘Each short or long project I do gives me ideas for my next project and helps me explore the hidden talent within myself. Art is something I used to run away from, but thanks to a friend I was brought back into the Art room’
Chippy Aiton
Shinobu Soya – ‘I come in here, I don’t think about anything I just do it.’
Sandra Lott – ‘At 57 age I finally had to sketch and succeed at last – Garden Landscaping, Tree Native Plants, Florals, Herbs.’
Tirzah Mileham – ‘I love Art. It helps me do things of how I’m feeling, and drawing or making things I like, and also for my family.’
Peter Lawrence
Tony Allen – ‘I do love Art, you can do absolutely anything you want as long as you don’t go overboard. You get a chance to put down things you think of and share it with everyone.’
Stephen Staunton
Mark Taylor – ‘I lose myself in painting, it makes me more relaxed, it makes me concentrate. The confidence it gives me when I see the end product is unbelievable.’
Joseph Hector
Richard Symes – ‘It’s a great place to come to, in my case it really tests my concentration, it’s a place where I can practise getting things done.’
Mark Bishop
Theresa Malcolm – ‘Even though I find it frustrating sometimes, I really enjoy seeing the finished piece.’
Richard Moss
SUBMIT TO LOVE STUDIOS at 92 Kingsland Rd, E2 8AG – 8th-15th May, 11am – 7pm
You may also like to read about
Miriam Lantsbury, Headway East
In the Kitchen At Headway East
Chris Miles’ East End
Chris Miles contacted me from Vancouver Island, where he describes himself as a Londoner in exile. ‘In the early seventies, I lived as a recently-graduated student in the East End, firstly on Grove Rd and then on Lauriston Rd above a supermarket,’ he explained and sent me his splendid photographs. Published for the first time today, mostly were taken around Bethnal Green, Roman Rd and Mile End, and Chris & I welcome identification of precise locations from eagle-eyed readers.
George Davis is Innocent, Mile End Rd
Linda ‘n Laura
Getting a loaf, Stepney Green
S Kornbloom, Newsagent & Confectioner, Jubilee St
Corner Shop Groceries & Provisions, Stepney Way
Ronchetti’s Cafe, Piano’s & Kitchen Chairs Wanted
Snacks & Grills
The Bell Dining Rooms, Lot 63 Buildings at back
Leslies Restaurant, Fresh Up with your Meal
Harry’s Cafe, Teas & Snacks, Breakfasts & Dinners
Valente’s Cafe, Hackney Rd
Cafe Restaurant
Dinkie
Station Cafe
Fish Bar
J Kelly, No Prams or Trollie’s, Please
G Kelly
Charlie & Mick’s Cafe
Menu at Charlie & Mick’s Cafe
John Pelican
Joe’s Saloon – ‘We cater for long and short hair styles’
M Evans & Sons, Garn Dairy
Marion’s, Blouses, Trouser Suits, Smock Dresses, Ect.
Sunset Stores
N Berg, Watch & Clock Repairs
S Grant, High Class Tailor, Seamens Outfitter
Littlewood Brothers Ltd, Domestic Stores, Grocery & Hardware
J Galley & Sons, Established 1901
Henry Freund & Son, Established 1837
Rito for Better Roof Repairs
Common Market NO
Alan Enterprises Ltd, L & R Ostroff Ltd, Brick Lane
Photographs copyright © Chris Miles
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A Walk In Long Forgotten London
If you got lost in the six volumes of Walter Thornbury’s London Old & New you might never find your way out again. Published in the eighteen-seventies, they recall a London which had already vanished, in atmospheric engravings enticing the viewer to visit the dirty, shabby, narrow labyrinthine streets leading to Thieving Lane, by way of Butcher’s Row and Bleeding Heart Yard.
Butcher’s Row, Fleet St, 1800
The Old Fish Shop by Temple Bar, 1846
Exeter Change Menagerie in the Strand, 1826
Hungerford Bridge with Hungerford Market, 1850
At the Panopticon in Leicester Sq, 1854
Holbein Gateway in Whitehall, 1739
Thieving Lane in Westminster, 1808
Old London Bridge, 1796
Black Bull Inn, Gray’s Inn Lane
Cold Harbour, Upper Thames St, City of London
Billingsgate, 1820
Bedford Head Tavern, Covent Garden
Coal Exchange, City of London, 1876
The Cock & Magpie, Drury Lane
Roman remains discovered at Bilingsgate
Hick’s Hall in Clerkenwell, 1730
Former church of St James Clerkenwell
Door of Newgate Prison
Fleet Market
Bleeding Heart Yard in Hatton Garden
Prince Henry’s House in the Barbican
Fortune Theatre, Whitecross St, 1811
Coldbath House in Clerkenwell, 1811
Milford Lane, off the Strand, 1820
St Martin’s-Le-Grand, 1760
Old Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam), Moorfields, in 1750
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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The Gentle Author In Covent Garden
On Friday 19th May, I will be talking about the history of street trading in Covent Garden and showing old pictures of the CRIES OF LONDON at the London Transport Museum in the Piazza, as part of the launch evening for their SOUNDS OF THE CITY exhibition. Tickets available here
Today it is my pleasure to publish Marcellus Laroon’s vibrant engravings of the Cries of London that he drew while living in Covent Garden, reproduced here from an original edition of 1687 in the collection at the Bishopsgate Institute
The death of Oliver Cromwell and the restoration of Charles II made the thoroughfares of London festive places once again, renewing the street life of the metropolis – and when the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed the shops and wiped out most of the markets, an unprecedented horde of hawkers flocked to the City from across the country to supply the needs of Londoners .
Samuel Pepys and Daniel Defoe both owned copies of Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London. Among the very first Cries to be credited to an individual artist, Laroon’s “Cryes of the City of London Drawne after the Life” were on a larger scale than had been attempted before, which allowed for more sophisticated use of composition and greater detail in costume. For the first time, hawkers were portrayed as individuals not merely representative stereotypes, each with a distinctive personality revealed through their movement, their attitudes, their postures, their gestures, their clothing and the special things they sold. Marcellus Laroon’s Cries possessed more life than any that had gone before, reflecting the dynamic renaissance of the City at the end of the seventeenth century.
Previous Cries had been published with figures arranged in a grid upon a single page, but Laroon gave each subject their own page, thereby elevating the status of the prints as worthy of seperate frames. And such was their success among the bibliophiles of London, that Laroon’s original set of forty designs – reproduced here – commissioned by the entrepreneurial bookseller Pierce Tempest in 1687 was quickly expanded to seventy-four and continued to be reprinted from the same plates until 1821. Living in Covent Garden from 1675, Laroon sketched his likenesses from life, drawing those he had come to know through his twelve years of residence there, and Pepys annotated eighteen of his copies of the prints with the names of those personalities of seventeenth century London street life that he recognised.
Laroon was a Dutchman employed as a costume painter in the London portrait studio of Sir Godfrey Kneller – “an exact Drafts-man, but he was chiefly famous for Drapery, wherein he exceeded most of his contemporaries,” according to Bainbrigge Buckeridge, England’s first art historian. Yet Laroon’s Cries of London, demonstrate a lively variety of pose and vigorous spontaneity of composition that is in sharp contrast to the highly formalised portraits upon which he was employed.
There is an appealing egalitarianism to Laroon’s work in which each individual is permitted their own space and dignity. With an unsentimental balance of stylisation and realism, all the figures are presented with grace and poise, even if they are wretched. Laroon’s designs were ink drawings produced under commission to the bookseller and consequently he achieved little personal reward or success from the exploitation of his creations, earning his living by painting the drapery for those more famous than he and then dying of consumption in Richmond at the age of forty-nine. But through widening the range of subjects of the Cries to include all social classes and well as preachers, beggars and performers, Marcellus Laroon left us us an exuberant and sympathetic vision of the range and multiplicity of human life that comprised the populace of London in his day.
Images photographed by Alex Pink & reproduced courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Peruse these other sets of the Cries of London I have collected
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
Homer Sykes’ Spitalfields
At the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in Brick Lane
From the moment he first came to London as a student until the present day, Homer Sykes has been coming regularly to Spitalfields and taking photographs. “It was very different from suburban West London where I lived, in just a few tube stops the contrast was extraordinary,” he recalled, contemplating the dislocated world of slum clearance and racial conflict he encountered in the East End during the nineteen seventies when these eloquent pictures were taken.
Yet, within this fractured social landscape, Homer made a heartening discovery that resulted in one of the photographs below. “The National Front were demonstrating as usual on a Sunday at the top of Brick Lane.” he told me, “I was wandering around and I crossed the Bethnal Green Rd, and I looked into this minicab office where I saw this Asian boy and this Caucasian girl sitting happily together, just fifty yards from the demonstration. And I thought, ‘That’s the way it should be.'”
“I walked in like I was waiting for a taxi and made myself inconspicuous in order to take the photograph. It seemed to sum up what should be happening – they were in love, and in a taxi office.”
In Princelet St
In Durward St
Great Eastern Buildings
In a minicab office, Bethnal Green Rd
Selling the National Front News on the corner of Bacon St
Photographs copyright © Homer Sykes
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Nevio Pellicci Goes To Market
Nevio Pellicci goes in search of Maris Piper
“This is my dad’s old car,” explained Nevio Pellicci as he drove Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & me through Bethnal Green before dawn, “I just use it now for these market trips” – and he patted the dashboard affectionately in remembrance of Nevio Pellicci senior. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Nevio drives over to the New Spitalfields Market to buy fresh vegetables for his celebrated family-run cafe in the Bethnal Green Rd which has been in business since 1900.
“I’m up at five-fifteen and at the cafe by six,” Nevio explained lightly, revealing that he had been working even before we set out that morning,”When I was a boy, my mum used to wake me at four-fifteen and I’d just roll over, but my dad used to switch the lights on. He was of the old school, he was a grafter. You always had be doing something, that’s how he prepared you for life ahead.”
We sped through the empty East End streets towards Leyton, where the nocturnal wholesale market was just winding down after a night’s trading. Once we drove through the security gates, Nevio’s first port of call was Johnny Bates – known as the Legend – a tall man with a shock of white hair, whose role goes by the arcane name of Cartminder. In other words, Johnny keeps an eye on Nevio’s car and makes sure his market purchases are safe when they are delivered to the car by the Porters. “I bring him a piece of bread pudding sometimes,” Nevio confided to me, “Not too often mind you, I don’t want to spoil him.”
We entered the vast market hall that stretched away into the distance with a bewildering array of stands displaying enough vegetables to feed a city, stacked up in tall metal towers. Nevio knew what he was looking for and went straight for the spring greens at Ernest Hammond, where he is a familiar customer – enough to be welcomed liked a long-lost relative by the fellows behind the desk. The current Mr Hammond informed me he is sixth generation in this family business, the oldest in the market.
When I looked around, Nevio was off searching among the produce, since the greens were merely the overture to his essential quest – for potatoes to make the chips for which Pelliccis are famous throughout the capital.“Mum won’t use anything else but these!” he announced, holding up a sack of Maris Piper in triumph.
“We used to get our veg delivered,” Nevio confessed to me, rubbing his hands in glee as we strode through the cavernous hall together, “But I prefer to come here, you get to see what you are buying and you save a lot of money.” Next stop was Aberdeen Stanton, third generation traders in the market. “This is where I get 95% of my stuff,” Nevio assured me with a proprietorial smile, “If they haven’t got it, they’ll find it for me.”
“I’m in and out in no time, I get everything and I’m back to the cafe,” admitted Nevio, once he had run through his list, yet since Sarah & I were there, he agreed to take a stroll around. Our last destination was Dino’s Cafe, that was formerly in Crispin St, Spitalfields, and moved here in 1991. “I used to come in here when I was bunking off school,” Nevio whispered to me. Taking a moment to shake hands with Ernesto Fiori, the proprietor, and greet Jim Olney, the paper bag seller from Donovans, we carried off cups of tea to drink on our way. As we were leaving, I met Keith Edwards, a Porter of forty-eight years standing – “I’ve Porters in my family in the London markets going back over a hundred years,” he told me.
Before I could pursue the conversation with Keith, we were outside in the sunrise as Porter, Terry Holt, arrived with Nevio’s order – delivered at the car where Johnny Bates was waiting. Terry boasted fifty-one years in the job. “I had three uncles down here as Porters in 1963,” he informed me proudly. Johnny Bates, thirty years a Cartminder, was not to be outdone –“My grandfather worked in Spitalfields Markt when he was eight years old and when the Market closed in the morning, he walked up through Quaker St, under the arches, whistling and then his mother came out the house with a piece of toast and his schoolbooks for him, and off he went to school.” After this disclosure, I knew why Johnny is known as ‘the Legend.’
We were chilled to the bone and, lacking the inborn vitality of market traders, Sarah & I were happy to be back in the warm at Pelliccis in Bethnal Green eating a hot breakfast. It had been an adventure, but for Nevio it happens three nights a week, every week, as a prelude to a day’s work in the cafe. The lengths some people will go to for fresh vegetables are astonishing.
Spring greens from Ernest Hammond
Lawrence
Ernest Hammond, six generations in the family business
Jim Olney, right, celebrated paper bag salesman
Nevio with Johnny Bates, legendary Cartminder
Nevio’s order for Pelliccis Cafe
Delivering the fresh veg at Pelliccis
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
E.Pellicci, 332 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 0AG
You may like to read my other Pellicci stories
Christmas Ravioli At E Pellicci
Maria Pellicci, The Meatball Queen of Bethnal Green
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits ( Part One)
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits (Part Two)
