Misericords At St Katharine’s Chapel
Tutivillus the demon eavesdropping upon two women
I spent yesterday morning on my knees in St Katharine’s Chapel in Limehouse, photographing these rare survivors of fourteenth century sculpture, believed to have been created around 1360 for the medieval St Katharine’s Chapel next to the Tower of London, which was displaced and then demolished for the building of the docks in 1825.
These marvellous carvings evoke a different world and another sensibility, combining the sacred and profane in grotesque and fantastical images that speak across time as emotive and intimate expressions of the human imagination. I am particularly fascinated by the sense of mutability between the human and animal kingdom in these sculptures, manifesting a vision of a mythic universe of infinite strange possibility which was once familiar to our forebears.
Intriguingly, these misericords appear to have been created by the same makers who carved those at Lincoln and Chester cathedrals, and a friary in Coventry.
After a sojourn of over a hundred years in Regent’s Park, the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, originally founded by Queen Matilda in 1147, moved back to the East End to Limehouse in 1948 where it flourishes today, offering an enclave of peace and reflection, sequestered from the traffic roaring along the Highway on one side and Commercial Rd on the other.
Centaur with club and shield
Tutivillus holds the parchment on the Day of Judgement
Owl
Bust of a bearded man in a striped cap with a cape and trailing drapery
Winged beast with a long tail and human head
Dragon
Edward III
Queen Philippa
Bishop’s head
Green man
Bearded man wearing a cap
A former Master of St Katharine’s was Chancellor of the Exchequer
Angel playing the bagpipes
Pelican in her piety with three chicks, supported by a pair of swans
Lion leaping upon the amphisbaena, supported by reptilian monsters
Coiled serpentine monster
Woman riding a beast with a man’s head
Elephant and castle surmounted by a crowned head
Beast with a hooded human head
Miser
Choir stalls with misericords
St Katharine’s Chapel was built in 1951 on the site of St James, Ratcliffe, destroyed in the blitz
Late fifteenth or early sixteen century carving of angel musicians playing a psaltery, a harp and tabor
The Royal Foundation of St Katharine, 2 Butcher Row, Limehouse, E14 8DS
With thanks to the Master of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine for permission to photograph the misericords
If you are interested to visit St Katharine’s Chapel please write to info@rfsk.org.uk
Ghost Signs Of Bermondsey & Southwark
Sam Roberts of London Ghost Signs kindly took me on a tour of Bankside recently to visit some of the ghost signs there which whisper tales of Bermondsey & Southwark’s past to anyone who cares to listen. Click here to get the App, learn more and undertake the walk for yourself. Also, some of these signs are illuminated this week as part of London Design Festival, details here.
Bermondsey Mesh & Wire Works, William Cockle & Co, moved to Tanner St off Bermondsey St in 1903, trading at this location until 1919.
Thomson Bros Ltd, Paper, Estab’d 1857, moved to Bermondsey St in 1952. An earlier sign with a date of establishment of 1840 is visible beneath.
Baylis & Co Ltd, Leather Factors, Morocco St
M. Emanuel Ltd, Leather & Leather Pieces, Office, Ground Floor, 3 Leather Market, Weston St. The company moved here in 1942 and left in the early eighties.
The Monster Ready Made & Bespoke Clothing Establishment, Albion House Clothing Comp’y, Branch Establishments, Paris, Antwerp and Ghent, Borough High St, founded at the end of the nineteenth century, the business traded here until 1910.
Take Courage, Redcross Way, signed painted in 1955 upon Brewer’s House of Barclay, Perkins & Co previously known as the Anchor Brewery built in 1807, when it was taken over by Courage.
Barlow Roberts, Shop Fitter, Builders and Contractors, Saw Planing, Moulding Mills, 15 Ryecross St, Estimates free for all kinds of building work and structural alterations, Best Work & Despatch, Southwark St, uncovered in 2014. The company was located here from 1908 and moved to Borough High St in 1920.
Ghost numbers at 53 Southwark St
Barclay & Fry Ltd, Printers, Stationers and Tin Box Makers, Great Guildford St, opened here in 1889 and continued trading until the nineteen-eighties. Sign was damaged in 1941 and repaired in 2009.
Rose Brand Fine Teas, James Ashby & Sons Ltd, Embassy Tea and Coffee and Ventilators and R.E.Jones, Union St. Home to Hayward Brothers, Ironfounders and makers of Ventilators, for eighty years before James Ashby moved here in the seventies
Commit No Nuisance, Doyce St. Situated at the rear of Borough Welsh Congregational Chapel and across the road from the former Fox & Hounds public house, the wording of these signs is a common euphemism for ‘No Pissing’ – also to be found on Christ Church, Spitalfields.
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Thierry Girard’s East End, 1976
Today it is my pleasure to show these previously unseen photographs by Thierry Girard, taken in the East End in 1976 and now the subject of a new book published by Cafe Royal Books
“More than simply pictures from my early years as a photographer, these are the starting point of my photographic work. At the beginning of 1976, when I was twenty-four, I had just graduated from Paris Institute of Political Studies and I had no specific idea about my future. I was very interested in photography, I bought my first photography books and I went to exhibitions, but I had very little experience.
At that time, my interest was in British photography and photographs taken in Britain by foreigners. I was an Anglophile. I was fond of Bill Brandt’s work, of course, and I was familiar with the photographs of Tony Ray-Jones, Homer Sykes and David Hurn – but the real catalyst was to be Robert Frank’s portfolio of London & Wales published in the 1975 edition of the Creative Camera International Yearbook. Knowing London rather well —I had stayed there several times in the previous years— I immediately related to the atmosphere of Frank’s pictures.
So I decided to go back to London for a challenge, a rite of initiation: to face the outside world and do photography. I stayed in the East End where I had lived as a student, although I did not intend to do a reportage about the East End or Eastenders. I just wanted to walk for hours and days in, snatching bits of life, passing through dilapidated districts, pushing doors of pubs, rambling through markets and playing with kids. I spent time with a wonderful couple, clever and cheerful people, but living in poverty in a damp basement flat while sewing ties for chic French companies. At lunchtime or in the evenings I went to strip pubs. The people attending the shows, both men and women, were locals.
I hope these photographs made in London in 1976 are worth revisiting. Very few of these pictures have ever been published or exhibited, but what I did there at the time has been decisive for my future as a photographer.” – Thierry Girard
At the Elephant, Dalston
In Brick Lane
At the Elephant, Dalston
In Bethnal Green
Alan B, homeworker in Graham Rd, Hackney
In Mare St
In Wapping
In Ridley Rd Market
In Dalston
Betty & Penny B, Graham Rd, Hackney
In Hackney
At Limehouse Social Club
In Wapping
At Limehouse Social Club
In Bethnal Green
In Tower Hamlets
In Hackney
In Hackney
Hackney Empire
Photographs copyright © Thierry Girard
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Philip Marriage’s Spitalfields
Malcolm Tremaine’s Spitalfields
Christopher Brown At Townhouse
Albion by Christopher Brown
Printmaker Christopher Brown‘s superlative linocuts feature in an exhibition entitled ALBION, A CELEBRATION OF BRITAIN IN PRINT by St Jude’s opening at Townhouse, 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields, tomorrow Tuesday 20th and running until Sunday 25th September from 11am daily.
Prints copyright © Christopher Brown
Photographs copyright © Alun Callender
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The Gentle Author At RIBA
In Gracechurch St, City of London
Next Wednesday 21st September at 8pm, I shall be presenting my photographs illustrating THE CREEPING PLAGUE OF GHASTLY FACADISM at the Royal Insititute of British Architects, 66 Portland Place, W1B 1AD. I will be showing choice examples of spectacularly incongruous facades from these pages, supplemented by new pictures taken over the summer.
My presentation is part of RIBA LATE – COPY PASTE CITY SCAPE, celebrating the opening of a new show entitled WE LIVE IN THE OFFICE in the RIBA Architecture Gallery by artist Giles Round, who will be printing facades from the RIBA archive onto ceramics.
Admission is free and you are all invited. Click here to book.
An affront in Spitalfields
Sweet Simple Old Place
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie braved the rain at St Katharine’s Precinct in Limehouse yesterday to record the installation of the new mural by Robson Cezar, King of the Bottletops, entitled SWEET SIMPLE OLD PLACE which is to be unveiled today at 3pm. Titled with a quote by William Morris and made from sixteen thousand bottletops supplied by East End pubs, especially The Golden Heart and The Carpenters Arms, this enormous work was commissioned by Bow Arts and The Royal Foundation of St Katharine. All are welcome to attend this afternoon’s event and the mural can be viewed at St Katharine’s Precinct thereafter.
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
St Katharine’s Precinct, Butcher Row, Limehouse, E14 8DS
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Robson Cezar, King of the Bottletops
King of the Bottletops at St Katharine’s Precinct
Phil Maxwell In Whitechapel Rd
In this sequence, Contributing Photographer Phil Maxwell documents the ceaseless flow of humanity along the mile of pavement between Aldgate and Whitechapel to the point where the Mile End Rd commences, at the junction with Cambridge Heath Rd where the turnpike once stood. Most people set out purposefully along this long straight road, unaware of those who linger to observe the spectacle and those with nowhere to go, who seek refuge at the Salvation Army’s Booth House.
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
CLICK HERE TO BUY A COPY OF PHIL MAXWELL’S ‘BRICK LANE’ FOR £10
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Phil Maxwell in Bethnal Green Rd
Phil Maxwell’s Kids On The Street
Phil Maxwell’s East End Cyclists
Phil Maxwell in Bethnal Green Rd
Phil Maxwell & Sandra Esqulant
