More Of Peta Bridle’s London Etchings
It has been a year since we heard from Peta Bridle, but this week she sent me her latest drypoint etchings of urban subjects to add to her growing portfolio of favourite people and places in London
Richard Lee, Sclater St – “Very obligingly, Richard let me take his photo whilst he was mending a puncture. His stall was originally set up on this pitch by his grandfather, Henry William Lee in the eighteen-eighties. Henry William passed the business on to his son Henry George Lee and now his grandson Richard runs the stall every Sunday in Sclater St Market on the same spot.”
Culpeper’s Herbs – “Here is a selection used by Herbalist Nicholas Culpeper who lived near Puma Court off Commercial St in Spitalfields. Here he ran his clinic and grew herbs to tend the sick in the seventeenth century. From left to right: Dandelion, Campion, Ox-eye Daisy, Buttercup & Ragwort.”
De Walvisch, Wapping – “I first saw this boat when I visited Hermitage Moorings last September over the Open House weekend. Then I contacted the owners and they kindly allowed me to draw their home. De Walvisch means ‘The Whale’ and she is a Dutch sailing Klipper boat from 1896. The boat has retained its original roef (deckhouse) and riveted iron hull. The owners told me that De Walvisch used to deliver eels to London along the Thames.”
Paul Gardner, Gardners Market Sundriesmen, Commercial St – “Here is my new picture of Paul Gardner. He patiently allowed me to draw him again after my last plate of him wore out. When you enter Paul’s shop you can barely move, so only about four people at a time can squeeze in! The shelves bow with the weight of bags and heaped in front of the counter are more bags and balls of string. Paul is a fourth generation Market Sundriesman and his great-grandfather James Gardner opened his shop here in the 1870.”
Waterloo Station – “This is a station I use frequently, and the clock and streams of people caught my eye.”
Crescent Trading, Quaker St – “The last remaining cloth warehouse in Spitalfields. where you can buy fine wool cloths, silks, damasks and cottons, Crescent Trading is run by two dapper gentlemen, Philip Pittack & Martin White. Whenever I visit, they are always beautifully attired in smart suits and ties.”
Shad Thames, Bermondsey – “A riverside street lined with converted warehouses, in Victorian times, these were used to house tea, coffee and spice. When I first moved to London in the nineties you could walk along here and still smell the aroma of spices trapped in the brickwork.”
Gas Holders, Bethnal Green – “Viewed from Mare St, along Corbridge Crescent past Empress Coaches, you see a fine pair of nineteenth century gas holders. English Heritage have decided not to list them and instead granted the owners a Certificate of Immunity against listing, permitting the gas holders to be destroyed and the site redeveloped.”
Blossom St, Norton Folgate – “Running the length of Blossom St are a row of Victorian warehouses built in 1868. Once the headquarters of Nicholls & Clarke they now stand empty, awaiting their fate. This is such a beautiful atmospheric street with its black brickwork and cobbles, I find it inconceivable that a tower block could one day loom in its place.”
Fruit & Wool Exchange, Spitalfields – “Viewed from the top of Spitalfields Market, the dignified Wool and Fruit Exchange stood in Brushfield St since 1927, yet today only a part of the facade remains.”
Phoenix Wharf, Wapping High St – “This beautiful old wharf caught my eye when I was out on a walk. It was built around 1830 and is the oldest wharf in Wapping. Luckily the building itself is not under threat, but the view we have of it now will change forever as the car park opposite is due for redevelopment along with Swan Wharf next door. The developers plan to reduce the Stepney lamppost, the oldest gas lamp left in London, to a stump.”
Oxgate Farm, Cricklewood – “One could easily walk past this without realising what a beautiful building lies behind the scaffolding. Yet once inside it is peaceful and quiet, and modern London is shut off completely. Oxgate Farm has stood here since 1465 and was once part of a thousand acre Manor of Oxgate owned by St. Paul’s Cathedral but now it is reduced to just the farm and back garden. Although Oxgate Farm has managed to survive the centuries, now it badly needs repairs to stop it falling down.”
Archaeological finds from the Bishopsgate Goodsyard – From the left to right – Bone spoon, bone button (top), ceramic wig curler (beneath), green glass phial(top), green glass bottle (beneath), white ceramic spoon (top), pair of ceramic marbles and a child’s bone whistle. (Courtesy of Museum of London Archaeology).
Tiles from the Bishopsgate Goodsyard – “Eighteenth century tin-glazed delftware wall tiles, as used in the fire surrounds of upper and middle class households. On the top left, I like the grumpy expression on the fisherman’s face – probably because he had tangled his line around his companions legs – also, the expressive posture of the couple talking in the meadow below appeals to me, she with her hand on her hip and clutching her bag.” (Courtesy of Museum of London Archaeology)
Gary Arber, W F Arber & Co Ltd – In 2014, Gary closed the print shop opened by his grandfather Walter in 1897 – “Gary is stood next to a Golding Jobber which he told me was used to print handbills for the suffragettes. On his right stands a Supermatic machine and, behind him in the corner, is a Heidelberg which he filled with paper to show me how it worked. The whole room was a confusion of boxes and paper with the odd tin toy thrown in, and lots of string hanging from the ceiling. I feel privileged to have been invited downstairs to make this record of his print shop.”
Spoons by Barn The Spoon – “From left to right: A cooking spoon. A spoon of medieval design. A spoon based on a Roma Gypsy design. The small spoon in the centre is a sugar spoon. A shovel. The large spoon on the right is a Roman ladle spoon. Barn told me the word ‘Spon’ which is carved on the handle is an old Norse word which means ‘chip of wood.’”
Leila’s Shop, Calvert Avenue “- I love visiting Leila’s Shop throughout the year to discover the fresh vegetables of every season, straight from the field and piled up in mouth-watering displays.”
Donovan Bros, Crispin St – “Although it is not a shop anymore I believe Donovan Bros are still producing packaging. I like the muted colours the shop front has been painted and wonder what the shop would have looked like inside?”
Borough Market, London Bridge – “This is the view overlooking Borough Market, looking from the top of Southwark Cathedral tower. The views of London from up there are beautiful but I don’t like the height too much!”
Wapping Old Stairs – “To reach the stairs you have a to go along a tiny passage to the side of the Town of Ramsgate. Originally, the stairs were a ferry point for people wishing to catch a boat along the river. I think they are quite beautiful and I like to see the marks of the masons’ tools, still left on the stones after all this time.”
The Widow’s Son, Bow (now closed for redevelopment) – “The landlady stands holding a hot cross bun in front of a large glass Victorian mirror with the pub name etched onto it. Every Good Friday, they have a custom where a sailor adds a new bun in a net hanging over the bar to celebrate the widow who once lived here, who made her drowned sailor son a hot cross bun each Easter in remembrance.”
E.Pellicci, Bethnal Green Rd – “Nevio Pellicci kindly allowed me to make a couple of visits to take pictures as reference to create this etching. It was at Christmas time and after they closed for the afternoon. Daisy my daughter is sitting in the corner.”
Tanya Peixoto at bookartbookshop, Pitfield St. “I am friends with Tanya who runs this shop and she has stocked my homemade books in the past.”
Des at Des & Lorraine’s Junk Shop, Bacon St – “An amazing place that I want to re-visit since I never got to look round it properly …”
Prints copyright © Peta Bridle
Visit Giorgione In Clapton
You can visit GIORGIONE IN CLAPTON from tomorrow, 31st March until 21st May
You enter a disused tramshed in Clapton, climb a ramshackle staircase and discover yourself in the studio of Giorgione, one of the greatest Venetian artists of the High Renaissance, who died in 1510. How can this be? Here in a room of comparable size to one of the smaller chambers at the National Gallery you are confronted with an array of masterpieces – familiar works, like Giorgione’s most famous painting The Tempest, surrounded by others that were thought to be lost, known only by engravings. Potentially the lair of an art thief or a master forger, it is some kind of miracle you have stumbled upon.
Neither thief nor forger, the magus responsible for working this magic is Danny Easterbrook who has devoted the last twenty-seven years to repainting the canon of works of Giorgione at the rate of three a year, using all the correct pigments and practices of Giorgione’s time. It is an extraordinary project rendered all the more astonishing by its location in this deserted tramshed and thus it is no surprise to discover that Danny is almost as passionate about the building as he is about Giorgione.
“The Tudor palace of Brooke House, dating from 1470, stood across the road from here until it was demolished in 1955,” Danny explained, widening his eyes in wonder, “The stables and coach yard for Brooke House were on this side of the road, becoming the Clapton Coachworks in the eighteenth century and, in 1873, The Lea Bridge Tramway Depot.”
The tramshed was shut more than a century ago, when the system switched from horsepower to electricity in 1907, and since then the buildings have served as a warehouse for Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco, as the home to the Odessa recording studios – employed by Iron Maiden, Dire Straits, The Police and Pete Doherty among others – as innumerable artists’ studios and recently as the premises of a foam rubber business.
Yet uncertainty over the future of the building underscores the melancholy of Giorgione’s dreamlike paintings, that emphasise the transient, ephemeral nature of the world, and colours Danny’s quest to recover something lost centuries ago. Vasari believed Giorgione to be the peer of Leonardo and Michelangelo, yet today only a handful of paintings are ascribed to him and his reputation has faded to an enigma that matches the mysterious nature of his subjects. “We don’t know much about Giorgione, he died young and he’s been obscured by Titian, who was his pupil,” admitted Danny with a frown, “Many of his paintings have been taken away from him and given to Titian.”
“When I came to London from New Zealand in the seventies, I was a bass player,” Danny revealed, speaking of his own past,“but a painter lived across the road and it sparked my interest. Since the early seventies, I’ve been painting and making lutes.” Then he took one from a whole line of different lutes he had made, hanging upon the wall, and began to improvise upon it with the ease of a virtuoso, and I realised I was in the company of a genuine Renaissance man.
A talented individual with a fierce scholarly intelligence, Danny has immersed himself in Venetian culture of Giorgione’s time, exploring the provenance of disputed works, and – in his versions – removing overpainting and images that have been added, in order to get closer to Giorgione. Through his intimate understanding of Giorgione, Danny seeks to restore the reputation of his beloved master by demonstrating the true range of his achievements in painting.
It is an endeavour that sits somewhere in between art history and conceptual art, and Danny’s accomplishment is breathtaking – even manufacturing elaborate gilt frames for each of the paintings in the authentic method. You look around the room and you realise you are seeing something impossible, something even Giorgione never saw – all his works in one room. Through comparison, Danny is beginning to construct a tentative sequence of Giorgione’s paintings and also, through comparison, to establish that paintings misattributed to others are in fact the work of Giorgione.
More than fifteen years ago, Danny spent a year putting a new roof on his studio which is also his home, high up in the former stables of the former tramshed. He has been a good custodian of a dignified old building. If he is forced to leave, he is looking at moving to Wales or the West Country. “When I came here it was cheap and you didn’t have to work a sixty hour week just to pay the rent, it was a perfect space for what I wanted,” he confessed to me regretfully.
Yet it is apparent that Danny’s visionary project will carry him forward wherever he goes. “I believe Giorgione painted a lot more than sixty paintings,” he admitted to me, “but if I live long enough I would like to attempt the very large paintings I’ve not yet done.”
Danny Easterbrook
Danny Easterbrook’s studio
A corner of the studio
The old stableyard
A blacksmith operated from here until recently
A ring to tether a horse
A hidden passage at the tramshed
A secret yard at the tramshed
The North Metropolitan Tramways Company Depot was opened in 1873
Rails where the trams once ran
Brooke House in the twenties
Brooke House in the eighteen-eighties, drawn in the style of Wenceslas Hollar
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
Giorgione in Clapton, The Tram Depot, 38-40 Upper Clapton Rd, E5 8BQ, until 21st May
Proud Parmiter’s Pensioners
In his will of 28th February 1682, Silk Weaver Thomas Parmiter bequeathed funds for ‘six almshouses in some convenient place upon the waste of Bethnal Green and further for the building of one free school houses or room, wherein ten poor children of the hamlet of Bethnal Green may be taught to read or write.’
Three centuries later, Thomas is remembered as the benefactor of Parmiter’s School and Parmiter’s Almshouses at Clacton, while around a hundred senior East Enders receive Parmiter’s Pensions of £150 annually plus two dinners and a beano.
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I joined the festivities at their Easter dinner and took these portraits of a dozen proud Parmiter’s Pensioners from Bethnal Green.
Rita Denison
Valerie Coleman
Peggy Metaxas
Jean Murphy
Jessie Walker
Kathy Clarke
Vi Davis
Irene Longman
Frances Crampin
Eileen Lee
Catherine Henry
Gladys Towns
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Save The Queen’s Head In Limehouse!
These are dark days for East End pubs. After the closure of The Widow’s Son in Bow for redevelopment last year, the Good Friday tradition of the Widow’s Buns was transferred to The Queen’s Head in York Sq, Limehouse, which is also under threat of closure. Yet, in spite of this, large crowds gathered at The Queen’s Head on Friday to celebrate in the Easter sunshine, undaunted by the grim climate for our beloved pubs.
Erica, ex-landlady of The Widow’s Son, assured me that she has the historic buns in safe keeping until a permanent home for them is discovered. Meanwhile, a representative of HMS President came on behalf of the Royal Navy to place this year’s bun in a makeshift net at the corner of the bar at The Queen’s Head. Ian McKellen dropped in to perform ‘The Ballad of the Widow’s Son’ and there was widespread jubilation as hot cross buns were distributed to all, courtesy of Mr Bunn the Baker in Chadwell Heath who, traditionally, always bakes the buns for the ceremony.
Jack Hunter & Denise West, landlords of The Queen’s Head, are determined that they will never call last orders in York Sq, and have launched a campaign to save the pub and ensure its survival in perpetuity. Since Tower Hamlets Council sold the Grade II listed building in 2012, its future has been uncertain but, in January, it was declared an Asset of Community Value, offering the chance for local people to take control of their pub.
Jack & Denise have launched a campaign for community purchase of the pub by establishing a Trust and they need your support in pledging to buy shares. Already, in just four days, over £44,000 has been raised. Now they have until August 29th to raise £525,000 to buy a hundred and twenty year lease on the pub. ‘If we don’t take this opportunity,’ Jack admitted to me, ‘it will be shut.’ If the bid for community ownership fails and the money is not raised, the pub will go to public auction and likely face redevelopment.
Commercial Rd was created in 1802 to bring traffic from West India Docks and East India Docks, and York Sq was laid out shortly afterwards, around 1825, by George Smith. It seems likely that The Queen’s Head was part of this design and the building dates from this era, with Simon Williams as the first recorded landlord in 1839.
Although the Queen originally commemorated was likely to have been George III’s wife Queen Caroline, the pub had a long association with Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The Bowes-Lyon family owned land nearby in Stepney and legend has it that she first visited during the blitz as the consort of George VI, while photos in the bar witness her return in 1987 to pull a pint.
Please help save this historic pub at the corner of one of the East End’s most beautiful squares for generations to come.
Denise West & Jack Hunter, landlords of The Queen’s Head
Dan Cruickshank pops in for a pint from Denise West
Jack Hunter holds up the hot cross bun for 2016
Ian McKellen performs ‘The Ballad of the Widow’s Son’
A representative of HMS President places a bun in a makeshift net for 2016
Ian McKellen with pearlies Doreen Golding and Bob Paice
The ceremony of the Widow’s Buns as enacted at The Widow’s Son
Top 4 photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Maurice Sills, Cathedral Treasure
Maurice Sills in the library at St Paul’s where he wrote the catalogue
If you were to read the staff list at St Paul’s Cathedral, where Maurice Sills is described simply as ‘Cathedral Treasure’, you might assume that a final ‘r’ had been missed from the second word. But you would be wrong. Maurice Sills has been in the world longer than you or I have been in the world – longer, I venture, than anyone reading this article. The truth is that Maurice Sills is over one hundred years old and he genuinely is a ‘Cathedral Treasure’ at St Paul’s.
Travelling to work by rail and tube from his home in North London three times a week, Maurice regularly gives up his seat to what he terms ‘old ladies,’ by which he means women of a generation later. There is an infectious enthusiastic energy about Maurice which he has kept alive through a long term involvement with sport and his delight in the presence of young people.
We met in the Chapter House at St Paul’s but Maurice was keen to take me up to the magnificent library, embellished with luxuriant carving by Grinling Gibbons, high in the roof of the old cathedral. When completed, the shelves were empty since all the books had been destroyed in the fire, but now the library is crowded with ancient tomes and Maurice has catalogued every one.
In this charismatic shadowy place, Maurice was completely at home – as if the weight of his hundred years fell away, rendered insequential by comparison with the treasures of far greater age that surrounded us, sequestered in an ancient library where time stood still.
Maurice – My earliest memory of anything – it must’ve been 1918 – was when I was staying with a relation who was manager of a grocer’s shop called Palmer’s in Mare St, Hackney, while my mother was having another child. They sold provisions – on one side you had bacon, butter and so forth and the other side fruit and vegetables. I can still picture us going down the wooden stairs of the shop into the cellar and, in the cellar, there was an oil stove, one of these with little holes in the top that cast lights onto the ceiling – I can still see those lights there. I worked out from my relations who I stayed with that it was a Zeppelin raid! So that was my first memory of life – those little marks on the ceiling while I was down in the cellar.
The Gentle Author – Maurice, are you a Londoner?
Maurice – Certainly I’m a Londoner, if West Norwood is London, yes. I was born there in 1915 and my baby brother still lives in the same house where he and I and five brothers were born, six of us all together.
The Gentle Author – What were your parents?
Maurice – My father worked in the Co-operative Bank. My mother was purely a mother, with six boys she had no choice but to be a mother! Norwood, in those days, was almost a village. My mother’s family were the local undertakers and everybody knew them. When somebody else opened up another undertakers that caused trouble. My parents got married a few months after my mother’s father died. My mother had to look after him when he was a widower, so she couldn’t get married. That’s how families were in those days, but when her father died that was freedom, so she had a quiet wedding and we were brought up in the house.
The Gentle Author – And what kind of childhood did you have?
Maurice – Being the eldest of six I had a lot of freedom because my mother had enough to do looking after the others – the three youngest boys were triplets. So I learnt to enjoy life. I was encouraged to enjoy sport by my father who played cricket and I became scorer for his team when I was eight. Cousins made sure I knew what soccer was like, so I enjoyed soccer for the whole of my days until lately. I played for my old school boys until I was forty-nine when I then got hurt badly and had to give up. My mother said, ‘Serve you right, you should’ve given up before,’ but I still played cricket until I was demoted to be the umpire because they wanted younger people, they said.
The Gentle Author – How old were you then?
Maurice – About eighty. They often asked me, as an umpire, where my dog was? Well, a blind man has a dog!
The Gentle Author – Did your parents bring you up to London to the West End?
Maurice – No, because we didn’t go far. We had a fortnight’s holiday every year in Bognor, Eastbourne or Clacton – a long way then. Other than that, the only outings I took on my own would be on bank holidays when I went to Crystal Palace where there was always a lot to see, whether it was motorcycle racing, speedway racing, or concerts.
When I was eleven, I obtained a free place at St Clement Dane’s school close to Bush House in the Aldwych, so I used to travel from South London on a tram every day to the Embankment and walk up the road to school.
The Gentle Author – What were your impressions of the city then?
Maurice – One was of The Lord Mayor’s show, which was not always on a Saturday as it is today. We were allowed to go into the churchyard at St Clement Danes and see the procession go by. The other thing which stuck in my mind was that every Christmas, Gamages in Holborn used to have a cricket week where well-known cricketers came, so I would go to obtain their autographs. But other than that, in a quiet way, I suppose I got to know London very well. I had a season ticket to town so, after two or three years, I would go to museums on my own. I was allowed complete freedom.
The Gentle Author – How wonderful for you to explore London.
Maurice – It meant I learnt a lot about it. I went to evening classes at Bolt Court just off Fleet Street. There were lectures on the City of London and summer evenings would be spent walking round to see things we had heard about.
The Gentle Author – Were you a good student?
Maurice – I did all the essays I was asked to do. I kept them til a few months ago when I was moving into an old people’s home and I decided I’d just got to say goodbye to them. I’ve no regrets. It was all wastepaper, it had been in a drawer for twenty years.
The Gentle Author – What age did you leave school?
Maurice – Seventeen. At that time it was very difficult to get a job.
The Gentle Author – This is the Depression?
Maurice – 1932. Like in the world today, it’s not who you are but who you know, and my father knew somebody so I started working. I went for interviews in banks, but I couldn’t pass the medical test. They weren’t very sure about my heart so they wouldn’t take me on. My father knew somebody at Croydon, not too far from where we lived, at the Co-operative there, so I worked at the office from 1932 to 1940, doing clerical work, and playing football and cricket, until the war came and I then went into the Navy for five years.
The Gentle Author – How did your involvement with St Paul’s Cathedral come about?
Maurice – In 1978, when I was at evening class at Bolt Court, a lady said to me at the tea break,‘You’ve just retired, you could come and help at St Paul’s.’ I came for a few months every Thursday and one day I took a school party round. Evidently, they wrote and said they had an interesting time, because the Dean asked me the next day if I could come more often.
The Gentle Author – Did you know the history already?
Maurice – I’d already got the background you see. I went home and said to my wife, ‘They want me to come more often, and she said, ‘Well, why can’t you?’ She was younger than me and was keeping me in the state of life that I wanted. She was kind. She only made one mistake in her life but there we are. She put up with it and suffered me for forty years!
The Gentle Author – Were you the mistake?
Maurice – Yes!
The Gentle Author – Why have you stuck with St Paul’s?
Maurice – After the Dean asked me and my wife said, ‘Of course you can,’ I took it on and for twenty-odd years I did all the school visits to the cathedral. But eventually they decided that the modern idea was to have an education department which meant they wanted a full-time paid person. I had been working twenty years for nothing and, because I worked for nothing, I enjoyed it – I didn’t have to worry what the other people thought. So I wouldn’t have put in for the new job and, fortunately, the headmaster at the Cathedral School said, ‘If they don’t want you, you can come here every day.’ So then I moved to working in the school.
The Gentle Author – Were you teaching?
Maurice – Helping out in various ways, especially hearing children read and going with the boys to watch them play football and cricket. For the last fifteen years I went every day, until eighteen months ago when I decided to cut it down and now I only go on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But the little children make a fuss of me.
The Gentle Author – How are you involved with the cathedral?
Maurice – In the morning I’m in the Cathedral School but then, after school lunch, I help in the library. One of my jobs is to ensure that we have two copies of every service, I put them all in order and file them away. I look up letter queries for the librarian. When people write to say, ‘I believe my great grandfather was in the choir at St Paul’s,’ I go through the records. Usually they hadn’t, they had sung here but with a visiting choir probably.
The Gentle Author – Do you know the collection well?
Maurice – Oh yes, many years ago the librarian decided we ought to have a list of all the books. And so, in my spare time, for about five years I wrote down on sheets of paper all the books. The ones in Greek were difficult, I just had to copy the alphabet. Those records are kept and the librarian still consults them today.
The Gentle Author – That’s a big achievement.
Maurice – I was lucky I had a librarian who chased me around in good fun and called me rude things, saying, ‘Get some overalls on you lazy so-and-so and get some work done!’
The Gentle Author – Do you like the cathedral?
Maurice – It’s given me a great deal. I’ve walked with school parties up to the top of the dome at least two thousand times, but I can’t do it any longer.
The Gentle Author – When was the last time you went up on top?
Maurice – Oh, probably five years ago. I’ve only become an invalid in the last two to three years really.
The Gentle Author – You don’t seem like an invalid.
Maurice – I’m wearing out. It’s hard work now – I have to make myself come here whereas I used to be dashing here. When I was a schoolteacher, I knew how many days before the next holiday. But here, when the school says they’re away for three weeks, ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I’m going to miss you. And the school lunch!’
The Gentle Author – Do you have any opinions about Wren’s architecture?
Maurice – Only insofar as I’ve read so much about it that I realise, in my lack of knowledge, what a wonderful person Wren was to do what he did, despite all the handicaps that he was up against.
The Gentle Author – What kind of man do you think Christopher Wren was?
Maurice – Well, he was so gifted at so much, you see, he was brilliant not just in one subject but in many things. And he persisted in what he wanted, even though it wasn’t always easy for him financially. He was a marvellous person to have done it and I realise it was 300 years ago, you know.
The Gentle Author – Three times your lifetime.
Maurice – That’s right and a lot has changed in my lifetime, so 300 years ago it was very different…
The Gentle Author – What do you think are the big changes in your lifetime?
Maurice – One of the biggest is computers, and now I realise my day is up. If I sit on the tube in the morning, if there are a dozen people – six here, six there – nine of them are playing with these tablets and phones. I’m not talking to anybody you see!
The Gentle Author – It’s rare to meet someone so senior, so I want to ask what have you learned in your life?
Maurice – I’ve learnt from experience how wonderful it can be to have sensible friends and a sensible upbringing and a perfect wife. My parents were strict insofar as we were told what was right and what was wrong. ‘I’d rather your hand was cut off than you stole something,’ my mother would say.
I learnt to live – I think – a full life. I’ve enjoyed my sport. How fortunate I have been in life that I have been pushed to do things rather than had ambition. I have no ambition.
When I was ending my time in the Royal Navy a colleague who was a schoolteacher said, ‘When the war is over you would make a good schoolteacher,’ and I said, ‘Of course I wouldn’t – my schoolteachers would laugh if you said that.’ But when the war was over, they were so short of male teachers, they were willing to take almost anybody. The result was my mate made me fill out a form – he pushed me and I became a teacher.
Every Christmas, I hear from about two dozen of my pupils of fifty years ago. When I go to watch cricket at the Oval when the season starts, one of my pupils of 1959, he’ll be there saying, ‘Oh you’re still breathing! We prayed for you every night and you always turned up in the morning despite our prayers!’
(Transcript by Rachel Blaylock)
Maurice Sills – ‘I learnt to live – I think – a full life’
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Easter Procession In Stepney
Every Easter, George & Dunstan, donkeys at Stepney City Farm enjoy an outing when they join the Parishioners of St Dunstan’s for the annual procession around the vicinity on Palm Sunday – and, this year, Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & I joined the enthusiastic throng on a cold and grey spring morning.
Walking down from Whitechapel, Colin & I followed Stepney Way, which was once a path across the fields used by worshippers when St Dunstan’s was the parish church for the whole of Tower Hamlets. St Dunstan founded it in 952 and it stands today as earliest surviving building after the Tower on this side of London.
At the old stone church, we discovered the wardens were eager to show us their ancient silver, a mace and a staff, with images of St Dunstan, the Tower and a Galleon referring to the days when this was the parish of seafarers. Once, all those who were born or died at sea were entered here in the parish register.
Curate Chris Morgan led off across the churchyard along the fine avenue of plane trees, swinging incense and followed by church wardens, sidesmen, George & Dunstan the donkeys, members of the parish and a solo trumpeter, with the Rector Trevor Critchlow bringing up the rear.
Anyone still nursing a hangover from Saturday night might have been astounded to be awoken by the sound of a heavenly host, and parted the curtains to discover this rag tag parade. Yet it was a serious commemoration of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem in which the streets of Stepney became transformed into the Via Sacra for a morning.
They marched through the empty terraced streets, past the large development site, turned left at the curry restaurant, passing the pizza takeaway and the beauty parlour, before turning left again at the youth centre to re-enter the churchyard. Then there was just time to pet the donkeys before they filed into the church to warm up again and begin Sunday morning prayers. And this was how Easter began in Stepney.
St Dunstan with his metalworkers’ tongs on top of the seventeenth century mace
A galleon upon an eighteenth century staff is a reminder St Dunstan’s was the parish of seafarers
Tower of London upon the reverse of the staff
Sidesmens’ batons from the era of George IV
Julian Cass, Sidesman
Jenny Ellwood, Sidesperson, and Sarah Smith, Parish Clerk
Trevor Critchlow, Rector of St Dunstan’s
Curate Chris Morgan leads the procession
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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Malcolm Tremain’s Spitalfields
In 1981, when Malcolm Tremain was working as a Telephone Engineer in Moorgate, he bought an Olympus 0M1 and set out to explore his fascination with Spitalfields.
‘I used to come over and wander round whenever I felt like it,’ he admitted to me, ‘I never thought I was making a record, I just wanted to take interesting photographs.’ Published for the first time today, Malcolm’s pictures of Spitalfields in the early eighties capture a curious moment of stasis and neglect before the neighbourhood changed forever.
Passage from Allen Gardens to Brick Lane – ‘I asked this boy if I could take his picture and he said, ‘yes.’ When I looked at the photograph afterwards, I realised he had one buckle missing from his shoe.’
Spital Sq, entrance to former Central Foundation School now Galvin Restaurant
In Spital Sq
In Brune St
In Toynbee St
Corner of Grey Eagle St & Quaker St
In Quaker St
Off Quaker St
Outside Brick Lane Mosque – ‘People dumped stuff everywhere in those days’
In Puma Court
Corner of Wilkes St & Princelet St
In Wilkes St
Outside the Jewish Soup Kitchen in Brune St
Outside the night shelter in Crispin St – ‘He was shuffling his feet, completely out of it’
In Crispin St
In Bell Lane
In Parliament Court
In Artillery Passage
In Artillery Passage
In Middlesex St – ‘note the squint letter ‘N’ in ‘salvation”
In Bishopsgate
In Bishopsgate
Petticoat Lane Market
In Wentworth St
In Wentworth St
In Wentworth St
In Wentworth St
In Wentworth St
In Fort St
In Allen Gardens
In Pedley St
In Pedley St
In Pedley St – ‘Good horse manure available – Help yourself – No charge’
At Pedley St Bridge
In Sun St Passage at the back of Liverpool St – ‘Note spelling ‘NATOINE FORANT”
In Sun St Passage
Photographs copyright © Malcolm Tremain
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