Malcolm Tremain’s East End In Colour
Complementing Malcolm Tremain’s colour photographs of Spitalfields in the early eighties, here are those taken around the East End and the City in the same era published for the very first time – as always, identifications of precise locations from readers are welcomed.
‘Games & Viewing Lounge Upstairs’
Wapping
The Turk’s Head, Wapping
Wapping
Wapping
Wapping
Wapping
Wapping
Wapping
Brewhouse Lane, Wapping
King Henry’s Wharf, Wapping
Wapping
Smithfield General Market
London Wall
Entrance to Museum of London at London Wall
London Wall
Spitalfields Market
Admissions line at Crispin St Night Shelter
Dusk in Allen Gardens
Photographs copyright © Malcolm Tremain
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Norton Folgate, The Fight Is On Again!
Hundreds joined hands to encircle Norton Folgate last summer
At a meeting on Tuesday night, the Spitalfields Trust decided to go to the Court of Appeal to challenge the verdict delivered by Justice Gilbart on Monday in favour of the Mayor of London and against the Trust in their campaign to prevent British Land destroying Norton Folgate.
There is a consensus that the Judge’s confirmation of the mishandling of the Mayor’s call-in of the Norton Folgate planning application cannot be squared with his conclusion that the Mayor’s decision to approve the development is legitimate. What kind of justice is it to confirm that powerful people can break the rules and get away with it? You have to ask yourself at which point such mishandling becomes abuse of power.
In their official statement (issued yesterday and published below) the Spitalfields Trust chose to widen their challenge by questioning the partial nature of the Mayor’s call-in whereby the GLA planning officers wrote their recommendations to suit the predetermined decision, emphasising the supposed benefits of the development and neglecting other factors. This is termed the ‘poisoning of the well’ issue and it brings the entire process into disrepute.
The notion that a Mayor of London who calls himself the ‘friend of developers’ should have the power to overrule planning decisions made democratically by local authorities is questionable. When this same Mayor stages a hearing and planning officers write reports to confirm his predetermined outcome this is highly questionable. When Justice Gilbart chose the opportunity of delivering his verdict to declare that it ‘warmed the cockles of his heart’ to read Boris Johnson’s words in the transcript of the hearing, this suggests a cosy level of flippant complacency which is also questionable.
The fight is on!
STATEMENT BY THE SPITALFIELDS TRUST, 12th May 2016
The Spitalfields Trust is naturally disappointed at the outcome of the Judicial Review. However there is more to this than the simple ruling: there is the full text of Mr Justice Gilbart’s judgment to consider.
This reveals that, in significant respects, the position taken by the Trust has been advanced. It is now definitively established that errors were made by the GLA on all four of the the Trust’s grounds – on the impact of Crossrail, on the cross-boundary effects of Crossrail, on the failure to take account of the Trust’s representations on the statutory criteria for Mayoral intervention, on the premature sending of an email confirming the planning officer’s recommendation.
The judgment establishes that a series of errors were made, with wider implications for the Mayor of London’s handling of planning applications. There is the matter of the weight that should be given to these mistakes – and the judge considered that each of these errors would not have made a difference to the take-over decision.
The Trust disagrees. It contends that the errors need to be considered in their totality, and their significance tested by the Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal may consider that the errors go further…
- That the misunderstanding of the criteria which has been identified in respect of Crossrail point to mistakes in identifying economic impacts and effects.
- That significant impacts needed to be addressed across the London Plan as a whole and that the Mayor failed to do so.
- That, having told the developer what the recommendation would be before reading statutorily relevant material, officers then wrote a report which was relentlessly supportive of the recommendation, omitting any arguments that the first two statutory criteria were not met.
- That officers who proceed on the basis of ‘recommendation first, evidence second’ and who privately tell the developer what they will – not might – say cannot be relied upon when they misreport the contrary view and make substantive errors. The judge did not grapple with this ‘poisoning of the well’ issue.
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE SPITALFIELDS TRUST’S
SAVE NORTON FOLGATE FIGHTING FUND
Photograph of Joining Hands To Save Norton Folgate by Morley Von Sternberg
Follow the Campaign at facebook/savenortonfolgate
Follow Spitalfields Trust on twitter @SpitalfieldsT
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Malcolm Tremain’s Spitalfields In Colour
A few weeks ago, I published Malcolm Tremain’s evocative black and white photographs of Spitalfields in the early eighties and today it is my pleasure to complement these with a selection of his colour pictures, seen here for the first time
In Liverpool St Station
Goulston St
Brushfield St
Brushfield St
Crispin St
Railing of the night shelter in Crispin St
Brune St
Holland Estate
Artillery Lane
Looking towards the city from the Spitalfields Market car park
Looking south towards Brushfield St
Looking north towards Spital Sq
Goulston St
Goulston St
Middlesex St
Middlesex St
Alley at Liverpool St Station
Sun Passage
Tunnel at Liverpool St Station
Old Broad St Station
Old Broad St Station
Old Broad St Station under demoliton
Old Broad St Station
Old Broad St Station
Old Broad St Station
Abandoned cafeteria at Old Broad St Station
Pedley St Bridge looking towards Cheshire St
Pedley St Bridge
Pedley St
Pedley St
Photographs copyright © Malcolm Tremain
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The Gentle Author’s Verdict
Yesterday a dark cloud burst over the East End and enough tears fell from the sky to engulf Spitalfields, entirely coincidental with the Judge’s verdict at the High Court in favour of the Mayor of London and against the Spitalfields Trust in their campaign to halt British Land’s destruction of Norton Folgate. Read the full details here
A fortnight ago, at the hearing, Justice Gilbart warned the Mayor’s lawyer that a defence based upon the Mayor’s planning ‘expertise’ was a risk, when an email revealed the Mayor had decided to determine the Norton Folgate application even before he had received it. The Judge questioned what kind of ‘expertise’ permitted the Mayor to ignore over five hundred letters of objection accompanying the application when he had an obligation to public consultation.
Yet, although Justice Gilbart confirmed in his verdict that the Mayor’s call-in of the planning application had been mishandled, he concluded that this was not sufficient to invalidate the Mayor’s approval of the scheme. In plain words, powerful people can break the rules and get away with it.
The pathos of the moment was overwhelming, as another episode in the history of violence in Spitalfields unfurled. Before long we may expect to see a vast ugly hole in Norton Folgate just as we are currently witnessing upon the site of the Fruit & Wool Exchange, another development waved through by Boris Johnson in his eagerness to bypass democracy to keep property developers happy. Thus Old Spitalfields is being disembowelled simultaneously at either end for the insertion of steel monoliths.
Spitalfields owes its origin to the Priory of St Mary Spital founded 1197 by Walter & Roisia Brunus. I often wonder if this was a convenient means for the City of London to banish street people, homeless and beggars from their territory by sending them a mile up the road. This complex was destroyed in the sixteenth century by Henry VIII in his ‘dissolution’ of the monasteries, when he turned the precincts into his Artillery Ground and granted apartments in the priory buildings to a few of his favoured people.
In more recent centuries, enforced redevelopment saw thousands evicted from their homes to permit the arrival of the railway in Shoreditch, the construction of Liverpool St Station and the cutting-through of Commercial St, bisecting Spitalfields from north to south, so that traffic from the Docks might not congest the City of London.
Over the last thousand years, Spitalfields has repeatedly proven a testing ground between the interests of the financial might of the City and the human needs of those who seek to make their living outside the walls. Recent events offer an eloquent testimony of the balance of power in our own time, setting contemporary institutionalised violence against the perspective of a brutal history.
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East End Cobblers
“When I left school at sixteen, I told the careers officer I didn’t want an office job, I wanted to do something creative, so he set up appointments for me with a shoe repairer and a watch repairer,” Gary Parsons, the proprietor of Shoe Key in the Liverpool St Arcade, told me.“The interview with the shoe repairer was on a Friday and I started work on the Monday, so I never went to the other interview,” he explained with the alacrity of one who now describes himself not as a shoe repairer but “the shoe repairer.”
Shoe repairmen have long been my heroes, the last craftsmen on the high street – where you can still walk into a workshop, inhale the intoxicating fragrance of glue and watch them work their magic on your worn out shoes. Even better than new shoes, there is something endearing about old shoes beautifully repaired. And so, in the heartfelt belief that – although it is commonplace – the modest art of shoe repair should not be underestimated, I persuaded Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie to accompany me on a sentimental pilgrimage to pay homage to some of my favourite East End cobblers.
When the crash happened in the City, news crews descended upon Gary at Shoe Key in Liverpool St to learn the true state of affairs from the authority. They wanted to know if city gents were getting more repairs rather than buying new shoes, or if the crisis was so deep that they could not even afford to mend the holes in their soles. Yet Gary dismissed such scaremongering, taking the global banking crisis in his stride. “There was a slump in the winter of 2008, but since July 2009 business has been steady,” he informed me with a phlegmatic understatement that his City clients would appreciate.
Twenty-two years ago, Gary built this narrow bar at the entrance to the Liverpool St Arcade where he and his colleague Mike Holding work fifty-four hours a week, mending shoes with all the flamboyant theatrics of cocktail waiters. They felt the blast of the Aldgate bomb here in 2005 and each winter they suffer the snow landing upon their backs, so every autumn they hang up a new tarpaulin to afford themselves some shelter from the future whims of fortune.
Round the corner from Shoe Key, I visited Dave Williams, a gentleman with time for everyone, comfortable in his enclosed booth in Liverpool St directly opposite the station. Dave told me he was the third generation in his trade,“My grandfather Henry Alexander and my father Norman were both saddlers and harness makers, my father he’s a Freeman of the City of London now. They were from an Irish immigrant family in Stepney. In those days, if people had trouble with their boots they took them along to the harness maker and gradually the trade in repairs took over. My training was at my father’s knee. I left school at sixteen and I have been doing this twenty-seven years. I think this trade is pretty much recession proof. It’s always been a good trade and I do very well thankyou.” In contrast to Gary at Shoe Key, Dave was full of self-deprecatory humour. Passing bags of shoes over to a couple of girls, “That’s two satisfied customers this year!” he declared to me with a cheeky smirk, the ceaseless repartee of a man who is sole trader and star turn in his own personal shoe repair theatre.
On the other side of Liverpool St Station, at the foot of the Broadgate Building, Kiri and George, the energetic double act at Michael’s Shoe Care, enjoy the privilege of having a door on their neat little shop, where everything is arranged with exquisite precision. The additional service at Michael’s Shoe Care is the engraving of trophies, cups, plaques and statuettes which – as George explained to me enthusiastically – are in big demand as rewards by corporate customers focussed upon hitting targets and setting employees in competition against each other. George, who has been here more than twenty years, leaned across with eyes gleaming in anticipation and confided his hopes to me, “Many places closed down round here recently and thousands of people were moved out, but the new builds will bring a lot of extra office space to rent. It’s just a question of waiting and more people will come to us.” I glanced up at the gleaming monoliths and thought of all the engraved trophies that will be required to reward all the corporate striving within. Yet in spite of the pathos of this bizarre appropriation of sports day trophies, I was happy in the knowledge that Kiri & George will be secure in their jobs for years to come.
Up at Well Heeled in Bethnal Green, Ken Hines – a veteran of fifty-two years of shoe repair – had a different angle which he delighted to outline.“I was going to be a blacksmith but there was no work in it, so I did shoe repair instead. I like doing it, I’ve always enjoyed doing it. My father was a docker and my family were all butchers in Wapping, my brother still has the butchers down the street. When I started here twenty-seven years ago, there were four shoe repairs in Bethnal Green now I am the only one. We don’t want to modernise. We don’t want to go modern, we’re not a heel bar. We’re going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. There’s a lot of people bringing vintage shoes and we can take them apart and put them back together again. There’s nothing we can’t do to a pair of shoes here.”
Ken invited me into his workshop, crowded with magnificent well-oiled old machines, prized hand tools and shelves piled with dusty bags of shoes that no-one ever collected.“This stitching machine is over a hundred years old, we use it more than ever.” he said placing a hand affectionately on the trusty device. “Soles should always be stitched on. You buy a pair of shoes and the soles aren’t stitched on, they’re no good.” he declared, pulling huge sheets of leather from a shelf to demonstrate that every sole is cut by hand here. While Ken stands sentinel over the traditions of the trade, training up an apprentice at the old shop in Bethnal Green, his enterprising son Paul has opened four more branches of Well Heeled in shopping centres. But such ambition is of little interest to Ken,“There’s a lot of knowledge you pick up, being around older men,” he informed me, getting lost in tender reminiscence as he lifted his cherished shoe repair hammer,“This was given to me by an old boy thirty five years ago. It was over eighty years old then and I still use it every day.”
Our final destination was Shoe Care at the top of Mare St in Hackney where John Veitch, a magnanimous Scotsman, welcomed us. “I done it since I left school.” he revealed proudly, speaking as he worked, hammering resolutely upon a sole,“I saw one of the boys doing it and I thought,’That’s the thing for me!’ and I’m still happy in it twenty-four years later. It’s the challenge I like, it’s something different every day. Stiletto heels are our bread and butter, the cracks in the pavements have been good for us. And the recession has been helping too, we get a lot more quality shoes in for repair when in the past people would just throw them away.”
At the end of our pilgrimage we had worn out plenty of shoe leather, yet it had been more than worth it to encounter all these celebrated cobblers, and be party to some of the unique insights into human life and society which shoe repair brings. It is a profession that affords opportunity for contemplation as well as the engaged observation of humanity, which may explain why each cobbler I met was both a poet and a showman to a different degree. I admired them all for their independence of spirit and ingenious talent, devoted to the mundane yet essential task of putting us back on our feet when we come unstuck and our soles wear thin.
Opposite Liverpool St Station
David Williams at Liverpool St Shoe Repair, third generation from a family of saddlers.
In the Arcade, Liverpool St Station
Gary at Shoe Key, “Time wounds all heels.”
Mike Harding at Shoe Key
Michael’s Shoe Care sells trophies given as rewards for hitting corporate targets
George at Michael’s Shoe Care
Kiri & George are a mean shoe repair team. “It’s total football,“ says Kiri
At Shoe Care in Hackney, “We got a lot more quality shoes in for repair these days.”
John Veitch of Shoe Care
Ken Hines at Well Heeled in Bethnal Green
Old Charlie’s hammer, “It was eighty years old when he gave it to me thirty five years ago.” said Ken
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Staircases Of Old London
Mercers’ Hall, c.1910
It gives me vertigo just to contemplate the staircases of old London – portrayed in these glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute. Yet I cannot resist the foolish desire to climb every one to discover where it leads, scaling each creaking step and experiencing the sinister chill of the landing where the apparition materialises on moonless nights.
In the Mercers’ Hall and the Cutlers’ Hall, the half-light of a century ago glimmers at the top of the stairs eternally. Is someone standing there at the head of the staircase in the shadows? Did everyone that went up come down again? Or are they all still waiting at the top? These depopulated photographs are charged with the presence of those who ascended and descended through the centuries.
While it is tempting to follow on up, there is a certain grandeur to many of these staircases which presents an unspoken challenge – even a threat – to an interloper such as myself, inviting second thoughts. The question is, do you have the right? Not everybody enjoys the privilege of ascending the wide staircase of power to look down upon the rest of us. I suspect many of these places had a narrow stairway round the back, more suitable for the likes of you and I.
But since there is no-one around to stop us, why should we not walk right up the staircase to the top and take a look to see what is there? It cannot do any harm. You go first, I am right behind you.
Cutlers’ Hall, c.1920.
Buckingham Palace, Grand Staircase, c.1910.
4 Catherine Court, Shadwell c.1900.
St Paul’s Cathedral, Dean’s staircase, c.1920.
House of Lords, staircase and corridor, c.1920.
Fishmongers’ Hall, marble staircase, c.1920.
Girdlers’ Hall, c.1920.
Goldsmiths’ Hall, c.1920.
Merchant Taylors’ Hall, c.1920.
Cromwell House Hospital, Highgate Hill, c.1930.
Ironmongers’ Hall, c.1910.
Cromwell House Hospital, Highgate Hill, c.1930.
Stairs at Wapping, c.1910.
Cromwell House Hospital, Highgate Hill, c.1930.
Staircase at the Tower of London, Traitors’ Gate, c.1910.
Hogarth’s “Christ at the Pool of Bethesda” on the staircase at Bart’s Hospital, c.1910.
Lancaster House, c.1910.
2 Arlington St, c.1915.
73 Cheapside, c.1910.
Dowgate stairs, c.1910.
Crutched Friars, 1912.
Grocers’ Hall, c.1910.
Cromwell House Hospital, Highgate Hill, c.1930.
Salters’ Hall, Entrance Hall and Staircase, c.1910.
Holy Trinity Hospital, Greenwich, c.1910.
Salter’s Hall, c.1910.
Skinners’ Hall, c.1910.
1 Horse Guards Avenue, 1932.
Ashburnham House, Westminster, c.1910.
Buckingham Palace, c.1910.
Home House, Portman Sq, c.1910.
St Paul’s Cathedral, Dean’s Staircase, c.1920.
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Watermen’s Stairs In Wapping
Wapping Old Stairs
I need to keep reminding myself of the river. Rarely a week goes by without some purpose to go down there but, if no such reason occurs, I often take a walk simply to pay my respects to the Thames. Even as you descend from the Highway into Wapping, you sense a change of atmosphere when you enter the former marshlands that remain susceptible to fog and mist on winter mornings. Yet the river does not declare itself at first, on account of the long wall of old warehouses that line the shore, blocking the view of the water from Wapping High St.
The feeling here is like being offstage in a great theatre and walking in the shadowy wing space while the bright lights and main events take place nearby. Fortunately, there are alleys leading between the tall warehouses which deliver you to the waterfront staircases where you may gaze upon the vast spectacle of the Thames, like an interloper in the backstage peeping round the scenery at the action. There is a compelling magnetism drawing you down these dark passages, without ever knowing precisely what you will find, since the water level rises and falls by seven metres every day – you may equally discover waves lapping at the foot of the stairs or you may descend onto an expansive beach.
These were once Watermen’s Stairs, where passengers might get picked up or dropped off, seeking transport across or along the Thames. Just as taxi drivers of contemporary London learn the Knowledge, Watermen once knew the all the names and order of the hundreds of stairs that lined the banks of the Thames, of which only a handful survive today.
Arriving in Wapping by crossing the bridge in Old Gravel Lane, a short detour to the east would take me to Shadwell Stairs but instead I go straight to the Prospect of Whitby where a narrow passage to the right leads to Pelican Stairs. Centuries ago, the Prospect was known as the Pelican, giving its name to the stairs which have retained their name irrespective of the changing identity of the pub. These worn stone steps connect to a slippery wooden stair leading to wide beach at low tide where you may enjoy impressive views towards the Isle of Dogs.
West of here is New Crane Stairs and then, at the side of Wapping Station, another passage leads you to Wapping Dock Stairs. Further down the High St, opposite the entrance to Brewhouse Lane, is a passageway leading to a fiercely-guarded pier, known as King Henry’s Stairs – though John Roque’s map of 1746 labels this as the notorious Execution Dock Stairs. Continue west and round the side of the river police station, you discover Wapping Police Stairs in a strategic state of disrepair and beyond, in the park, is Wapping New Stairs.
It is a curious pilgrimage, but when you visit each of these stairs you are visiting another time – when these were the main entry and exit points into Wapping. The highlight is undoubtedly Wapping Old Stairs with its magnificently weathered stone staircase abutting the Town of Ramsgate and offering magnificent views to Tower Bridge from the beach. If you are walking further towards the Tower, Aldermans’ Stairs is worth venturing at low tide when a fragment of ancient stone causeway is revealed, permitting passengers to embark and disembark from vessels without wading through Thames mud.
Shadwell Stairs
Pelican Stairs
Pelican Stairs at night
View into the Prospect of Whitby from Pelican Stairs
New Crane Stairs
Wapping Dock Stairs
Execution Dock Stairs, now known as King Henry’s Stairs
Entrance to Wapping Police Stairs
Wapping Police Stairs
Metropolitan Police Service Warning: These stairs are unsafe!
Wapping New Stairs with Rotherithe Church in the distance
Light in Wapping High St
Wapping Pier Head
Entrance to Wapping Old Stairs
Wapping Old Stairs
Passageway to Wapping Old Stairs at night
Aldermans’ Stairs, St Katharine’s Way
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