Spitalfields Life

On Monday 24th October, The East End Preservation Society presents the C R ASHBEE MEMORIAL LECTURE 2016, delivered by Rowan Moore, Architecture Critic of the Observer, at Shoreditch Church, speaking about THE FUTURE OF LONDON. Tickets are free but must be booked in advance by clicking here

Today, I trace a brief outline of the life and work of the man who inspired this annual lecture and who deserves to be celebrated in the East End for his prescient thinking and creativity.

Rebus of Charles Robert Ashbee (1863 – 1942)

Very few in the East End are aware of CR Ashbee today and even those that recognise the name have only a vague idea of his achievements. Yet in recent years, as I have come upon his work, it has fostered a curiosity about the man and his concerns – and I have found that they reflect those of our own time with unexpected relevance.

Perhaps the ‘Ashbee Room’ at Toynbee Hall is where most people become aware of his presence. It was over six weeks in the summer of 1887 that Ashbee worked there with the students of his Ruskin class to create an elaborate mural of trees, punctuated by golden rondels to his design and bordered with a frieze of the crests of Oxford & Cambridge colleges. The rondels contained a letter ‘T’ in the form of a tree which remains the symbol of Toynbee Hall, even if the mural is long-gone. A battered low-level table survives, manufactured to Ashbee’s design, it was conceived as a means to encourage debate by placing those seated around it in an informal relationship.

Born into an affluent liberal family, while an undergraduate at Cambridge, Ashbee had acquired the friendship of Roger Fry and Edward Carpenter, and embraced their common enthusiasm for Romantic Socialism and the Arts & Crafts Movement. At first, while training in the office of Bodley & Garner, Gothic Revival church architects, Ashbee travelled to Toynbee Hall at the end of each working day but, encouraged by the collaborative experience of creating the mural, he consulted Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, regarding his notion to found his own workshop and school of arts and crafts in the East End.

On 23rd June 1888, Ashbee’s School & Guild of Handicraft opened under Samuel Barnett’s supervision at 34 Commercial St next to Toynbee Hall as a workers’ co-operative with just four members. By 1890, the Guild moved to Essex House on the Mile End Rd in Bow, where it operated as an independent entity. Thanks to the skill of the craftsmen and their apprentices, executing Ashbee’s fashionable Arts & Crafts designs, the Guild enjoyed a degree of success, creating works to private commission and selling furniture and metalwork through a shop in Brook St. When William Morris died, he left the machinery from his Kelmscott Press to the Guild and more than a thousand books were published under the imprint of the Essex House Press.

Yet an event on the Guild’s doorstep was to take Ashbee’s interests in a new direction. In 1893, the London School Board bought an old brick house nearby on St Leonard’s St and commenced demolishing it to construct a new school on the site. Ashbee realised that the structure was part of a former Palace of James I but was only able to save the panelling of the state room which was transferred to the Victoria & Albert Museum. He saw that if the existing building could have been included within the structure of the new school, it would have been an inspirational educational resource for the pupils.

Grieved by this loss, Ashbee realised that a register of significant historic buildings was required if they were to be saved from destruction and he established a Watch Committee to record all those in East London. Meanwhile, in September 1895, Ashbee learnt that the seventeenth century Trinity Green Almshouses in Whitechapel were threatened with demolition and he led a campaign to save them, not just for their architectural merit but as manifestation of the charity and fellowship of past ages – and it is thanks to Ashbee’s initiative that these buildings survive. In fact, his Watch Committee of 1894 became the Survey of London which continues to publish today.

Saving old buildings and establishing the Guild were integral beliefs for Ashbee. Beyond his own career as a designer and architect, he was concerned with the dignity of craftsmanship as a means to liberate individuals, permitting them financial and moral independence through working in an environment which was collectively managed with shared profits. Similarly, regarding old buildings, he believed these were the shared legacy of all and that we need to preserve structures of quality, in order to better appreciate our own past and have a perspective upon our own time.

An architect and designer of significant talent, CR Ashbee lived out his progressive beliefs in his work, whether collaborating with a metalworker in the design of a piece of jewellery or conceiving a plan for a garden city that would give the best quality of life to its inhabitants. As a measure of the respect he drew, when he transferred the Guild of Handicrafts from Bow to Chipping Campden in 1902, one hundred and fifty East Enders moved with him and, astonishingly, there are practising silversmiths in the Cotswolds today who are the grandchildren of those who moved there with Ashbee. Ultimately, the Guild was disbanded and the participants went their separate ways, but his was a worthy endeavour that we do well to remember in the East End.

The first Guild of Handicraft workshop at 34 Commercial St

Essex House in Bow, opposite Mile End Tube, became the headquarters of the Guild of Handicrafts

Members of the Guild of Handicraft in 1892

The cabinet making workshop at Bow

Jewellery workshop

Jewellery workshop

Metal workshop

In the print shop

A page set in the ‘Endeavour’ typeface designed by CR Ashbee and printed at Essex House, 1901

CR Ashbee writes a campaigning letter to the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings enlisting their support to save Trinity Green Almshouses in Whitechapel from demolition, 1895

CR Ashbee’s symbol for the Guild Of Handicraft, 1889

CR Ashbee by William Strang, 1903

THE EAST END PRESERVATION SOCIETY presents the C R ASHBEE MEMORIAL LECTURE 2016 on Monday 24th October at 7:30pm at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, E1 6JN

Rowan Moore explores ‘The Future of London.’ Drawing on his recent book ‘Slow Burn City: London in the Twenty-First Century,’ Moore looks at the physical fabric of contemporary London as a site of social and cultural struggle, connecting the political and architectural decisions of London’s enfeebled and reactive government with the built environment that affects its inhabitants’ everyday lives.

London has always been a city of trade, exploitation and opportunity. But London has an equal history of public interventions, like the Clean Air Act, the creation of the green belt and council housing, and the innovation of infrastructure projects like the sewers and embankments that removed the threat of water-born cholera. The responses to the challenge of a transforming London were creative and unprecedented – huge in scale and often controversial. So while London must change, Moore explains why it should do so with a ‘slow burn,’ through the interplay of private investment, public good and legislative action.

Rowan Moore is architecture critic for the Observer and previously for the Evening Standard. He is a trained architect, and was Director of the Architecture Foundation until 2008.

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance by clicking here

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A year ago, I enjoyed a day trip to the ancient town of Sandwich and wrote a eulogy in these pages, outlining the wonders of the borough. Before long, an invitation to return was forthcoming from the citizens of Sandwich and, consequently, I had the pleasure of giving a lecture there in the Elizabethan courthouse last Friday as part of Sandwich Arts Week.

Again, I was blessed with a golden autumn day for my visit which, I was reliably informed, was on account of the Sandwich micro-climate. After spending a quiet night at the Fleur De Lis Hotel in Delft St, I woke early on Saturday morning and followed the narrow path down to the sea which has retreated a mile since the days when Sandwich was Britain’s second largest port, after London.

Sandwich Courthouse where I gave my lecture may be seen at the centre of this photograph taken from the tower of St Peter’s church

Manganese Delft fireplace in the courthouse

The courtroom where I gave my lecture

The house on the left is the birthplace of Thomas Paine, author of the ‘Rights of Man’

Holy Ghost House, dated to 1636 and Holy Ghost Alley

Looking back down Holy Ghost Alley

Medieval bastions of the Water Gate

Malt Shovel House

Thanks to the generosity of the owner, I was able to visit the rambling Harfleet House which has graffiti dated 1411 and a window from a medieval galleon built into the structure

At St Mary’s Church

Effigy at St Peter’s Church

The path to the sea

The last blackberries

Golfers on the dunes

Sea Holly

Digging for whelks at Sandwich

You may like to read my original story

At Sandwich

Photographer Louis Berk & writer Rachel Kolsky let me pick these five buildings that interest me from their new book WHITECHAPEL IN FIFTY BUILDINGS. (Click here to buy a copy for £12)

37 Stepney Green, the oldest house on the green, built 1694

37 Stepney Green was built for Dormer Sheppherd, a slave owner and merchant. In 1714, Mary Gayer, the widow of the East India Company’s Governor of Bombay, Sir John Gayer, moved in and it is her initials, ‘MG’, that are visible on the gates. Such houses are a reminder of when this was ‘Millionaire’s Row’ – their wealth derived from mercantile trade on the Thames. Later residents included a Chairman of the East India Company and Nicholas Charrington, a member of the brewing family. From 1875 until 1907, the house became a Jewish retirement home. Thereafter, it was briefly a Craft School before passing into the hands of the local authority in 1916. In 1998, Spitalfields Historic Housing Trust took ownership and it was fully restored by the new private owner.

Gwynne House, Turner St – built 1934

In a quiet street behind the Royal London Hospital is one of Whitechapel’s most unusual buildings. Surrounded by eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, the modernist Gwynne House appears like a landlocked ocean liner.

Designed by Hume Victor Kerr, it consists of twenty-one flats over five storeys, linked by a rounded external staircase on which the name is displayed in art deco lettering. The design has an undeniable nautical flavour, with rounded windows in the front doors like portholes and the original white finish of the building survives.

Originally owned by the Royal London Hospital, it was built for as accommodation doctors and nurses but, in 2012, the owners decided to sell it to developers, citing that medical staff no longer expect or want to live in hospital-owned accommodation.

Unusually for an architect, Kerr also had a prolific military career. After lying about his age to fight in the First World War, he went from private to major between 1914 and 1919 and from gunner to colonel between 1939 and 1942.

Between and after the wars, he was a prolific architect. Also in Turner St is a factory he designed for M. Levy and in New Rd is his imposing Empire House, a warehouse and showroom, sold for redevelopment in 2015. Over in Middlesex St, he built Commerce House, which was demolished in the nineties, but the surviving buildings in Whitechapel ensure Hume has left his mark on the area.

The Co-operative Wholesale Society, 99 Leman St – built 1885-87

The impressive red-brick building on the corner of Leman St & Hooper St, complete with an imposing clock tower, was built for the CWS as its London headquarters. The name is still visible on the recessed brick, alongside the wheat sheaf motif and the ‘Labor and Wait’, motto – with the American spelling to show support for the anti-slavery campaign.

By 1900, Leman St became lined with warehouses for sugar and tea and coffee roasting and the CWS became known as the ‘Larder of Leman St.’ With its proximity to the docks, the CWS operated speedy transport links to its national headquarters in Manchester. The London headquarters remained in use until the late sixties, when nearby St Katharine and London Docks closed and the need for storage and offices declined.

The beautiful ceilings, inlaid woodwork and fireplaces of the original CWS London headquarters are no longer to be seen as the building was converted into luxury apartments in 20o9. Yet the clock tower remains, said to be a replica of Big Ben, though a quarter of the size. The makers, Thwaites & Read, restored it to working order with a digital mechanism, though it no longer chimes, which is obviously an advantage for residents.

The Eastern Dispensary, Leman St – built 1858

At the top of Leman St, a gleaming white Italianate building built in 1858 proclaims itself proudly as the ‘Eastern Dispensary’ with ‘Supported by Voluntary Contributions’ on either side of its ornate porch.

Prior to the National Health Service, public dispensaries provided medicines free of charge and provident dispensaries were run on a self-help basis via subscription. Founded in 1782 by doctors in the City, the Eastern Dispensary was originally located on Great Alie St. In 1858, it moved into this building designed by G. H Simmonds, a local surveyor and secretary to the dispensary.

Remaining as a dispensary until the Second World War, afterwards it was leased to various charities before falling into disuse. To protect it from redevelopment, the dispensary was listed by English Heritage and sold only when the new owner would ensure refurbishment. In 1998, it was restored and reopened as a pub with a mezzanine gallery overlooking the former consulting room.

The Proof House, 48/50 Commercial Rd – built 1757

This small, unassuming yellow brick building belonging to the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers has few distinguishing marks and is easily missed by the traffic hurtling down Commercial Rd.

Granted its royal charter in 1637 to promote and regulate gun making, the Company has continued this work to the present day. All guns sold must be tested to confirm soundness of barrel and action. Originally sited alongside the Aldgate, in 1675 the Proof House moved to a less-populated area just outside the City following an explosion that damaged the City wall.

The current London Proof House dates from 1757 and the Livery Hall alongside from 1872. The Receiving Room, where guns are delivered, and the Proof Master’s House to the left of the building were both built in 1826.

It is here that the London gun mark ‘GP,’ beneath a crown, is placed on guns suitable for firing and those, following deactivation, safe for collectors. For over three hundred years guns for private and military use have been inspected, proved and marked here.

Photographs copyright © Louis Berk