Viscountess Boudica At The Society Club
In her ongoing attempt to prevent eviction from her council flat, Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green is exhibiting her drawings for sale at The Society Club, 12 Ingestre Place, Soho, W1F 0JF. All readers of Spitalfields Life are invited to the opening next Wednesday 20th July 7-9pm. Drawings are priced at £40 each or you can click here to donate direct to the Viscountess’ fund.
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At Central Books
Do you wonder where Spitalfields Life Books come from? Perhaps you thought I keep them in my attic in Spitalfields and I climb a rickety ladder every time someone wants one? In fact, they have recently been coming from Central Books‘ magnificent agglomeration of old warehouses in Hackney Wick, which is the next best thing.
Yet the modern age has caught up with Central Books, which was founded by the Communist Party in 1940, and they are now moving to fancy new warehouse in Chadwell Heath opposite Nichols & Clarke, another emigrant from the East End. So, as they make preparations to leave their nineteenth century premises for good, I took this last opportunity for a ramble around to explore the forgotten corners of the lonely old book store with my camera.
Central Books’ headquarters is a tall building on Wallis Rd that was originally the Clarnico Chocolate Box Factory. It houses offices on the top floor, a packing room on the ground floor and three floors of bookshelves in between. During the Olympics and to bemusement of the staff, MI5 made frequent visits to this building which enjoys a unique view upon the site of the games.
Grafted onto this tower are a string of warehouses of differing ages, connected by yards that have been subsequently roofed over to create a curious architectural assemblage, in which former exterior walls become interior and you walk from early nineteenth into early twentieth century spaces. Before they became a book warehouse, all these structures were built for different purposes, some lost.
The largest warehouse has an elaborate wooden roof with rough hewn timbers which appears as much agricultural as industrial in style. This early nineteenth century barn-like space was once used for the manufacture of lace and, since the precise location is unknown, may be where the very first plastic – parkesine – was manufactured in the eighteen-sixties in Hackney Wick.
Central Books arrived here in 1990 from the Leathermarket in Bermondsey, yet the company began at the Communist Party HQ in King St, Covent Garden, in the thirties, before opening a shop in Red Lion Sq then Grays Inn Rd and expanding to thirty-two party shops across the country by 1945, distributed books produced by the USSR to the entire free world.
Yet when Bill Norris – who runs Central Books today – took over in 1984, the fortunes of the company had followed the decline of the Communist movement. Bill oversaw the transfer of ownership of Central Books to the workforce in the nineteen-nineties, as it cut its political ties and expanded to distribute a wide range of independent publishers.
Today, a small company like Central Books give a personal service that cannot be matched by corporate distributors yet, although the move to Chadwell Heath will increase efficiency, I shall miss the atmospheric old warehouses in Hackney Wick which have given my books a temporary home on their journey between the printer and the bookseller, on their way to you.
Announcement of the founding of Central Books by the Communist Party. Nowadays, Central Books distributes The Gentle Author’s London Album and Spitalfields Nippers but it was once quite different.
Central Books in 1961
Two buildings spliced together
Central Books occupy the former Clarnico Chocolate Box Factory
Retailers can order all Spitalfields Life Books wholesale direct from orders@centralbooks.com
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A London Bestiary
Contributing Artist Adam Dant has created this splendid portfolio of chiaroscuro wood cuts of Ten Creatures of London Legend
The Vegetable Lamb Of Tartary, Lambeth Palace
This was believed to be a sheep grown on a plant from a melon-like seed. Introduced to England by Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth century, an example of this legendary zoophyte can be found at Lambeth Palace.
The City Of London Dragon, Chancery Lane
The dragon guards the boundary of the City of London and its design is based upon a seven-foot-high original created by J B Bunning in 1849, upon the roof of the former Coal Exchange in Lower Thames St.
The Werewolf Of London, Guys Hospital
In 1963, Dr John Illis of Guys Hospital wrote a paper On Porphyria & Aetiology Of Werewolves, arguing that red teeth, photosensitivity and psychosis experienced by those suffering of Porphyria may have been the characteristics that led to them being mistaken for werewolves.
The Enlightenment Merman, British Museum
Part-monkey and part-fish, the Merman was ‘caught’ in Japan in the eighteenth century and given to Queen Victoria’s virtuous grandson Prince Arthur who donated the desiccated creature to the British Museum, where it may be found today in the Enlightenment Gallery.
The Olympic Park Monster Catfish, Stratford
In December 2011, a Canada Goose was dragged beneath the waters of the River Lea by an unseen predator believed to be a Monster Catfish known to locals as ‘Darren.’
The Sheep Having A Monstrous Horn, Royal Society
This animal from Devonshire gained fame in the capital having been presented to the Royal Society on account of a giant twenty-six inch horn which grew from its neck.
Old Martin, Martin Tower At The Tower Of London
Old Martin, the phantom bear of the Tower of London’s Martin Tower is reported to have scared one unfortunate beefeater to death. A bear by the name of Old Martin was given to George III by the Hudson Bay Company in 1811 when the Tower had its own menagerie.
Spring-Heeled Jack, Bearbinder Rd In Mile End
Numerous sightings of a violent demonic creature with supernatural abilities at jumping terrorised people in the East End in 1838.
The Phantom Chicken, Pond Sq Highgate
The half-plucked Chicken, which was seen most recently in 1970 by a caressing couple, is said to be the same chicken which Sir Francis Bacon had attempted to pack with ice in 1626 during an early experiment in freezing food that resulted in the philosopher’s death from Pneumonia.
Twelve Foot Fossilised Irish Giant, Broad St Station
Weighing two tons and fifteen hundredweight and standing twelve feet two inches tall, the fossilised ‘Irish Giant’ disappeared from Broad St Station in 1876 after being dug up by a Mr Dyer in County Antrim and toured around Liverpool and Manchester.
Images copyright © Adam Dant
You may also like to take a look at these other works by Adam Dant
Map of Shakespeare’s Shorediche
Adam Dant’s Map Of The Coffee Houses
Map of the History of Shoreditch
Map of Shoreditch in the Year 3000
Map of Shoreditch as the Globe
Map of the History of Clerkenwell
At Spitalfields Fruit & Veg Market
Twenty-five years ago this summer, the wholesale fruit & vegetable market left Spitalfields, where it had been established in 1638 by charter of Charles I, and transferred to a site on the Hackney Marshes where it continues to operate today.
Mark Jackson & Huw Davies’ Spitalfields market photographs of 1990 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 looming overhead.
Mark & Huw 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, they 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, 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 remain as an unrivalled achievement in the photography of markets.
Mark & Huw had only the resources to print a tiny fraction of their photographs, which means that this is the first time anyone has seen many of these pictures. Although there is a vivid realism in these photographs, there is an ethereal quality too, especially as many figures exist as mere shadows against the glimmering lights of the market. After the recent architectural interventions, there is an emptiness in the Spitalfields Market now it has been cleaned up, a tangible absence of everything that is here in these pictures. The chaotic beauty of market life has gone and these shadows haunt the market today.
Photographs copyright © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
You can see the original selection of
Mark Jackson & Huw Davies’ Photographs of the Spitalfields Market
and read about
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Ivor Robins, Fruit & Vegetable Purveyor
In A Dinghy With John Claridge
You have until July 21st to visit John Claridge’s EAST END photography exhibition at Vout-O-Reenee’s in Aldgate and there are still tickets available for the EAST END documentary film show introduced by David Collard at Vout-O-Reenees this Thursday 14th July at 7pm. (Email info@vout-o-reenees.co.uk to reserve your free ticket)
Ship maintenance, 1964
Take a trip down the Thames at a relaxed pace with Photographer John Claridge, in his tiny inflatable dinghy with outboard motor attached. The journey begins in 1961 when the London Docks were still working and ends in the nineteen eighties once they were closed for ever. This set of photographs – published here for the first time – are some of the views to be seen on that voyage.
Setting out at dawn, John’s photographic adventures led him through smog and smoke, through early morning mist, through winter fog and haze upon the river, all filtering and refracting the light to create infinite luminous effects upon the water. In the previous century, Joseph Mallord William Turner and James McNeill Whistler had attempted to evoke the distinctive quality of Thames light upon canvas, but in the mid-twentieth century it was John Claridge, kid photographer from Plaistow, who came drifting out of the London fog, alone in his dinghy with camera and long lens in hand to capture his visions of the river on film.
Look, there is a man scraping an entire boat by hand, balanced precariously over the water. Listen, there is the sound of the gulls echoing in the lonely dock. “It smells like it should,” said John, contemplating these pictures and reliving his escapades on the Thames, half a century later, “it has the atmosphere and feeling of what it was like.”
“You still had industry which created a lot of pollution, even after the Clean Air Act,” he recalled, “People still put their washing out and the dirt was hanging in the air. My mum used to say, ‘Bloody soot on my clean clothes again!'” But in a location characterised by industry, John was fascinated by the calm and quiet of the Thames. “I was in the drink, right in the middle of the river,” John remembered fondly, speaking of his trips in the dinghy, “it was somewhere you’d like to be.” John climbed onto bridges and into cranes to photograph the dock lands from every angle, and he did it all with an insider’s eye.
Generations of men in John’s family were dock workers or sailors, so John’s journey down the Thames in his dinghy became a voyage into a world of collective memory, where big ships always waited inviting him to depart for distant shores. Yet John’s little dinghy became his personal lifeboat, sailing on beyond Tower Bridge where in 1964, at nineteen years old, he opened his first photographic studio near St Paul’s Cathedral. John found a way to fulfil his wanderlust through a professional career that included photographic assignments in every corner of the globe, but these early pictures exist as a record of his maiden voyage on the Thames.
Across the River, 1965
Gulls, 1961
Quiet Evening, 1963
Smog, 1964
At Berth, 1962 – “It wills you to get on board and go somewhere.”
Three Cranes, 1968
Skyline, 1966 – “I climbed up into a crane and there was a ghostly noise that came out of it, from the pigeons roosting there.”
Steps, 1967
Crane & Chimney Stack, 1962
Spars, 1964
After the Rain, 1961
Capstan, 1968
From the Bridge, 1962
Across the River, 1965
Wapping Shoreline, 1961 – “I got terribly muddy, covered in it, sinking into it, and it smelled bad.”
Thames Barrier, 1982
At Daybreak, 1982
Warehouses, 1972
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
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Along the Thames with John Claridge
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George Cruikshank’s London Summer
JULY 1838 – Flying Showers in Battersea Fields
Should you ever require it, here is evidence of the constant volatility of English summer weather, courtesy of George Cruikshank’s Comic Almanack published by Henry Tilt of Fleet St annually between 1835 & 1853, illustrating the continuum of festivals and seasons of the year for Londoners. (Click on any of these images to enlarge)
JUNE 1835 – At the Royal Academy
JUNE 1836 – Holidays at the Public Offices
JUNE 1837 – Haymaking
JULY 1835 – At Vauxhall Gardens
JULY 1836 – Dog Days in Houndsditch
JULY 1837 – Fancy Fair
AUGUST 1836 – Bathing at Brighton
AUGUST 1837 – Regatta
SEPTEMBER 1835 – Bartholomew Fair
SEPTEMBER 1837 – Cockney Sportsmen
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Richard Ivey In Toynbee St
Photographer Richard Ivey took these pictures recording the extravagant derelection evident in the buildings to the east of Toynbee St in Spitalfields, some of which have been decaying for forty years
Photographs copyright © Richard Ivey
These photographs are reproduced courtesy of Architeckton
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Phil Maxwell in The Royal London Hospital
