Philippe Debeerst At Malplaquet House
Photographer Philippe Debeerst sent me his splendid photographs which are published for the first time here today, and accompanied by my own account of a visit to Malplaquet House in Mile End Rd
Walking East from Spitalfields down the Mile End Rd, I arrived at the gateway surmounted by two stone eagles and reached through the iron gate to pull on a tenuous bell cord, before casting my eyes up at Malplaquet House.
Hovering nervously on the dusty pavement with the traffic roaring around my ears, I looked through the railings into the overgrown garden and beyond to the dark windows enclosing the secrets of this majestic four storey mansion (completed in 1742 by Thomas Andrews). Here I recognised a moment of anticipation comparable to that experienced by Pip, standing at the gate of Satis House before being admitted to meet Miss Havisham. Let me admit, for years I have paused to peek through the railings, but I never had the courage to ring the bell at Malplaquet House before.
Ushered through the gate, up the garden path and through the door, I was not disappointed to enter the hallway that I had dreamed of, discovering it thickly lined with stags’ heads, reliefs, and antiquarian fragments, including a cast of the hieroglyphic inscription from between the front paws of the sphinx. Here my bright-eyed host, Tim Knox, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, introduced me to landscape gardener Todd Longstaffe-Gowan with whom he restored the house. In 1998, when they bought Malplaquet House from the Spitalfields Trust, the edifice had not been inhabited in over a century, and there were two shops,“F.W. Woodruff & Co Ltd, Printers Engineers” and “Instant Typewriter Repairs,” extending through the current front garden to the street.
Yet this single-minded pair recklessly embraced the opportunity of living in a building site for the next five years, repairing the ancient fabric, removing modern accretions and tactfully reinstating missing elements – all for the sake of bringing one of London’s long-forgotten mansions back. Today their interventions are barely apparent, and when Tim led me into his Regency dining room, as created in the seventeen-nineties by the brewer Henry Charrington and painted an appetising arsenic green, I found it difficult to believe this had once been a typewriter repair shop. Everywhere, original paintwork and worn surfaces have been preserved, idiosyncratic details and textures which record the passage of people through the house and ensure the soul of the place lingers on. The success of the restoration is that every space feels natural and, as you walk from one room to another, each has its own identity and proportion, as if it were always like this.
By December 1999, the shops had been almost entirely removed leaving just their facades standing on the street, concealing the garden which had already been planted and the front wall of the house which was repaired, with windows and front door in place. Then, on Christmas Eve an exceptionally powerful wind blew down the Mile End Rd, and Tim woke in the night to an almighty “bang,” to discover that in a transformation worthy of pantomime, some passing yuletide spirit had thrown the shopfronts down into the street to reveal Malplaquet House restored. It was a suitably dramatic coup, because today the house more than lives up to its spectacular theatrical debut – it is some kind of curious masterpiece.
I hope Tim will forgive me if I confess that while he outlined the engaging history of the house with professional eloquence – as we sipped tea in the first floor drawing-room – my eyes wandered to the mountain goat under the table eyeing me suspiciously. Similarly, in the drawing-room, my attention strayed from the finer points of the architectural detail towards the ostrich skeleton in the corner.
As even a cursory glance at the photos will reveal, Tim & Todd are ferocious collectors, a compulsion that can be traced back to childhoods spent in Fiji and the West Indies. They have delighted in the opportunities Malplaquet House provides to display and expand their vast collection of ethnographic, historical, architectural and religious artefacts, natural history specimens and old master paintings. Consequently, as Tim kindly led me from one room to another, up and down stairs, through closets, opening cupboards in passing, directing my gaze this way and that, while continuously explaining the renovation, pointing out the features and giving historical context, I could do little but nod and exclaim in superlatives that grew increasingly feeble in the face of the overwhelming phantasmagoric detail of his collection.
Yet he confessed how fascinated he is by the everyday life of the Mile End Rd and the taxi office across the road that has remained open night and day since he first came to live here, before we walked into the walled yard at the rear, canopied by three-hundred-year-old tree ferns, and wondered at the echoing sound of a large community of sparrows that have made their home in this green oasis. It is a paradox of submitting to the spell of this remarkable house that the familiar external world is rendered exotic by comparison.
I have been in older houses and grander houses, but Malplaquet House has something beyond history and style, it has pervasive atmosphere. It has mystery. It has romance. You could get lost in there. When I came to leave, I shook hands with Tim and lingered, reluctant to move, because Malplaquet House held me spellbound. Even after my brief visit, I did not want to leave, so Tim walked with me through the garden into the street to say farewell, in a private rehearsal for his own eventual departure from Malplaquet House one day.
Sam Jevon, A Different Person
Several years ago, Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Alex Pink experienced a life-changing head injury and, in the second of two stories published with Headway East London, he collaborates with fellow-survivor Sam Jevon to present another personal testimony of discovery and recovery.
“The accident has done me a favour in a lot of ways”
“All I remember is that I was going shopping at the time. I never got to go shopping. It happened in 2006. In June this year, it will be ten years ago. My daughter was seventeen and my son was fifteen.
I was a passenger in a car, I was sitting next to the driver and I was not wearing a seat belt. As it was summer, the window was open. When the accident happened, the car rolled over and I came out of the window. I got the worst injuries, the driver got a broken shoulder. Apparently, the person who went into the back of us had only been driving for a week.
I was taken to the Royal Free Hospital. I was in a coma for a couple of months. I had a bolt coming out of my head. Because of the pressure, they had to take a bit of my skull out. I have a titanium plate there now. It is a big plate – it covers quite a big area of my head. After my injury, my dad was talking to my doctor about whether I would make it. The doctor said ‘If anyone will, she will.’ I have always been determined.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a policewoman but I was no good. You needed higher maths and I was not very good at numbers. I enjoyed school but I had a lot of different maths teachers. I started to play darts when I was about fifteen. That improved my maths. I used to be a good darts player, I used to beat the men.
When I was about eighteen, I started drinking as well. I used to drink a lot. It was around then I met my husband. I married at twenty and had my daughter, Jessica, when I was nearly twenty-one – the same age as when my mother had me. I was twenty-three when I had my son, Spencer. He has Asperger’s and he was a nightmare when he was little, bringing him up was the biggest challenge in my life.
I had to do it on my own. Their dad was useless. He left when Spencer was six months old because he could not handle him. He never understood my son because he is different. He should be proud of Spencer but he is not. When I was out with Spencer, people would stare. I said, ‘What are you looking at?’ I never slept for four years because Spencer could not sleep at night – because of his eyes, I think. He has night blindness, the condition is called retinitis pigmentosa. My sister says I must have had a lot of patience. My parents have been very good, my mum used to look after my children so I could go out.
I have lived in Enfield my whole life. I’ll be forty-seven next spring. My parents are separated but friendly, my mum lives with my sister who is nine years younger than me and my dad lives twenty minutes away from me. I have been divorced for twenty-one years now – a long time. I do not want a relationship. Men are such hard work.
The accident has done me a favour in a lot of ways because, before, the doctor told me my liver was dodgy and I do not drink at all now. I was very angry and short-tempered, I was awful. A lot of people at the pub say that I was a nightmare. I was angry about a lot of things – but now, the only thing that could upset me is if anything happened to anyone in my family. My personality has changed. I am mellow now. I am calm.
I definitely think some things have improved since the injury. I could help my children out financially when they were at university because of the compensation case. I had a solicitor and a case manager who dealt with a lot of things. My living situation has improved. Where I live now, I have my own garden. I live in an adapted bungalow in quite a nice area and I have good neighbours. From my new place, I can see the tower block I used to live in when I was young.
I would not describe myself as a disabled person at all. I would describe myself as different – in the way I look and the way I walk. I walk with a bit of a limp. My voice is different, and my eyes – one is bigger than the other. Those are about the only differences. Physically, I look the same. Some people think I had a stroke, because of the way I walk. I do not mind telling people. How I was in the car, I was not wearing a seatbelt and it rolled over and that I came out the window.
The injury has never made me feel depressed. I was depressed quite a lot before my injury because of the way I was living, because I had to bring my children up on my own and I had to rely on my parents. I tried to take an overdose three times. I did not take a lot because I thought ‘I have children to look after.’ I went to my doctor and he put me on anti-depressants. This was many years before the injury. I had to go and talk to someone. It helped having someone to talk to, I felt better. I was still taking anti-depressants when I was in the accident.
I think the accident has affected my family the worst because I am not the same person I used to be. I used to help them out with filling forms in and everything. I cannot do that now. And my sister, because she is nine years younger than me, I was like a mum to her. That has definitely changed. Every time she had a problem, she could phone up and talk to me. She cannot now. I cannot give advice the way I used to. Before the accident, I used to say what I felt but I cannot say much now.
I only have one friend from before. All the other friends disappeared. That is how it is after an injury – you find out who your friends are. I have my support worker, Janet. She is my best friend now. She helps out with problem-solving. That is my main difficulty. For example, reminding me to check the dates on food if it tastes funny. If I am stuck with something, she will say, ‘Why don’t you try doing it this way?’
Over the years since the accident, I have got my confidence back. I go out a lot. I just speak to people – in the shop and in the pub where I go. I do not drink any more but I still have a good time. I like to see everyone else making fools of themselves. I am still in a darts team. After the accident I used to throw darts on the floor because of my balance, but now I can get them in the board.
Some things are coming back again. I can do quite a lot for myself. I like ironing. I can put the washing in. I can do cooking. I progress every year. I would like to be able to do more for myself – just more and better.”
Photographs copyright © Alex Pink
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William Matthews, Electrician, Waiter & Gym Instructor
Melis Marziano, Pizza Chef
Over the last year, as I have walked up and down Hanbury St each day, I have grown aware of the indefatigable presence of Melis Marziano, known as ‘Gigi,’ the Pizza Chef at Vesuvio, Pizzeria & Restaurant. At first, he was barely perceptible at the edge of my vision but, as months passed, I came to notice Gigi more frequently. I realised that, however grim the weather or low the temperature, you always can rely upon the high spirits of Gigi, the diminutive chef, skylarking in his curious outsize spotted red cap which gives him the look of a toadstool come to life. Thus, almost imperceptibly, Gigi became part of my landscape.
So this week, Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I went along make Gigi’s acquaintance and admire his pizza-throwing antics. Immediately, we discovered we were in the presence of a maestro with an independent spirit who has enjoyed a globe-trotting career thanks to his natural culinary talent and bravura performance skill.
“My parents were bakers in Sardinia and I worked closely with them so, by the time I was thirteen, I was experimenting – baking bread with cheese and tomatoes. I had six brothers and six sisters and I played a lot of football but, at fifteen, I was making pizza and I have been doing it for forty-five years now.
In 1985, I came to London because I thought I could do better here and since then I have been travelling all over the world, living in the most beautiful cities and making pizza – Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Recife, Paris, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Gran Canaria. I returned as the pizza chef for the opening of Franco Manca in Brixton, then I worked for Pizza Express, opening seven new restaurants for them, before I came here a year ago. If I am busy I can make fifty to sixty pizzas a day. I love my job. You are working alone, independent of the rest of the kitchen so there’s not much stress. Making pizza is the best artisanal job there is.”
While delivering this monologue, Gigi took four lumps of dough and stretched them out into flat rounds, then he spun them in the air, tossing them and catching them, spinning each one on a single finger as if it were a needle upon an inverted record. Then, laying his perfectly-even circular pizzas down, Gigi spread tomato sauce on each one with a flourish, making the design of a bull’s eye before applying different toppings and then slipping them into his oven with a baker’s shovel.
It was an effortlessly impressive performance by Gigi, captured by Sarah Ainslie’s lens while I undertook a culinary investigation which consisted of eating an entire pizza. And I can confirm it tasted pretty good too, with just the right balance of sweet tomato and tart tangy cheese. This is the everyday genius of Gigi, Spitalfields’ irrepressible pizza chef.
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Vesuvio Pizzeria & Restaurant, 61 Hanbury St, E1 5JP
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Agnese Sanvito’s Toilets At Dawn
Acknowledging that, in Spitalfields, where once you could spend a penny, the toilet itself is now on sale for one million pounds, here are Agnes Sanvito’s moody and lyrical portraits of former public conveniences at sunrise
Former public convenience in Spitalfields on sale for one million pounds
Many people get up in the night to go to the toilet, but Agnese Sanvito gets up in the night and cycles across London to pay a visit. Yet her purpose in getting up is different from most, Agnese gets up to go and photograph the toilet in the dawn. Although not an early riser by temperament, “I can get up straight away – no matter how early – if there is good reason,” admitted Agnese to me candidly, so it is a measure of her commitment to photographing toilets that this constitutes such a reason.
“I kept seeing toilets from the top deck of the bus in different locations.” Agnese told me, rolling her deep brown eyes in wonder, “I find them beautiful, but no-one pays them any attention, and I find them kind of alone.” Let me confess, Agnese’ words struck a chord for me because I share her melancholy connoisseurship of these abandoned temples. Built in an era when their humble public service was considered a worthy purpose, these tragic toilets are those that never evolved into tanning parlours and are now resigned to rot – while the fetid alleys and rank backyards of our city serve as makeshift replacements. Once upon a time, somebody had the smart idea to sell off our public toilets to raise cash and now we are confronted daily with the reason why they were built.
“I started in Rosebery Avenue, where I saw the first one from the bus,” continued Agnese enthusiastically, “And then one day I was taking photographs at an event in Christ Church, Spitalfields and when I came out, there I saw another one.” Yet her photographic project was far from straightforward, “At first, I tried to photograph them in the day” explained Agnese, with a critical grimace, “but there were always cars and people everywhere, even when the light was good. So I thought maybe a dawn light could be more beautiful, and with less people and cars, you could see the structure better.”
Sentimentalists often praise the beauty of sunsets, but only a few share the secret knowledge that the dawn is far superior in enchantment, and it is the dawn light that elevates these pictures beyond elegies. The possibility of the new day emphasises the grace of these structures, whether contrived of florid wrought iron or framed in modernist simplicity, their utilitarian beauty is undeniable. They are portals to a world denied to us. Closed down and locked up, they confront us with our own conflicted natures – why create something and not use it? The misdirected ingenuity in these pictures is pitiful, contriving means to prevent litter accumulating or stop people breaking in, as if anyone would rob a disused toilet. Rather than wrestle with this knotty dilemma, we have entered into a general agreement to pretend they do not exist, and let nature and decay take its course.
“They’re part of the fabric of the city, but because they’re not in use no-one pays attention to them, they are forgotten spaces,” confirmed Agnese affectionately, delighting in these structures that are the catalyst for her elegant photographic mediations upon the culture of the metropolis. “At the moment, I have just photographed those in the area that are near to me. It’s a work-in-progress, I don’t know where it’s going.” said Agnese, thinking out loud, “Now my friends call sometimes and say, ‘I’ve found another one.'”
Anecdotes gather round these disused toilets like old plastic bottles and falling leaves. Agnese told me that the ladies’ in Smithfield was locked while the men’s was open, drawing the conclusion this was because the workforce at the meat market is male. Laurie Allen told me he was too scared to pull the flush at the one in Petticoat Lane when he was a child in case he started a tidal wave and got drowned. And I recall the sinister spectacle of the one in Whitechapel being pumped full with concrete as a praecursor to obliteration, as if it never existed.
Let us applaud photographer Agnese Sanvito for recognising the poetry in this most unpromising of locations. She may not yet know where this is going, but I know I may presume to ask readers to suggest more subterranean lavatorial locations for Agnese’ lense to focus on.
Petticoat Lane
Petticoat Lane
Bishopsgate
Smithfield
Clerkenwell Green
Rosebery Avenue/Farringdon
Rosebery Avenue/Farringdon
Rosebery Avenue/Clerkenwell Rd
Stamford Hill
Stamford Hill
Lambs Conduit St
Lambs Conduit St
Kentish Town
Foley St
Foley St
Photographs copyright © Agnese Sanvito
Click here if you are interested to buy the toilet in Spitalfields
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At The Lord’s Convenience
“Slovenliness is no part of Religion. Cleanliness is indeed close to Godliness” – John Wesley, 1791
Oftentimes, walking between Spitalfields and Covent Garden, I pass through Bunhill Fields where – in passing – I can pay my respects to William Blake, Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan who are buried there, and sometimes I also stop off at John Wesley’s Chapel’s in the City Rd to pay a visit to the underground shrine of Thomas Crapper – the champion of the flushing toilet and inventor of the ballcock.
It seems wholly appropriate that here, at the mother church of the Methodist movement, is preserved one of London’s finest historic toilets, still in a perfect working order today. Although installed in 1899, over a century after John Wesley’s death, I like to think that if he returned today Wesley would be proud to see such immaculate facilities provided to worshippers at his chapel – thereby catering to their mortal as well as their spiritual needs. The irony is that even those, such as myself, who come here primarily to fulfil a physical function cannot fail to be touched by the stillness of this peaceful refuge from the clamour of the City Rd.
There is a sepulchral light that glimmers as you descend beneath the chapel to enter the gleaming sanctum where, on the right hand side of the aisle, eight cedar cubicles present themselves, facing eight urinals to the left, with eight marble washbasins behind a screen at the far end. A harmonious arrangement that reminds us of the Christian symbolism of the number eight as the number of redemption – represented by baptism – which is why baptismal fonts are octagonal. Appropriately, eight was also the number of humans rescued from the deluge upon Noah’s Ark.
Never have I seen a more beautifully kept toilet than this, every wooden surface has been waxed, the marble and mosaics shine, and each cubicle has a generous supply of rolls of soft white paper. It is both a flawless illustration of the rigours of the Methodist temperament and an image of what a toilet might be like in heaven. The devout atmosphere of George Dance’s chapel built for John Wesley in 1778, and improved in 1891 for the centenary of Wesley’s death – when the original pillars made of ships’ masts were replaced with marble from each country in the world where Methodists preached the gospel – pervades, encouraging solemn thoughts, even down here in the toilet. And the extravagant display of exotic marble, some of it bearing an uncanny resemblance to dog meat, complements the marble pillars in the chapel above.
Sitting in a cubicle, you may contemplate your mortality and, when the moment comes, a text on the ceramic pull invites you to “Pull & Let Go.” It is a parable in itself – you put your trust in the Lord and your sins are flushed away in a tumultuous rush of water that recalls Moses parting the Red Sea. Then you may wash your hands in the marble basin and ascend to the chapel to join the congregation of the worthy.
Yet before you leave and enter Methodist paradise, a moment of silent remembrance for the genius of Thomas Crapper is appropriate. Contrary to schoolboy myth, he did not give his name to the colloquial term for bowel movements, which, as any etymologist will tell you, is at least of Anglo-Saxon origin. Should you lift the toilet seat, you will discover “The Venerable” is revealed upon the rim, as the particular model of the chinaware, and it is an epithet that we may also apply to Thomas Crapper. Although born to humble origins in 1836 as the son of a sailor, Crapper rose to greatness as the evangelist of the flushing toilet, earning the first royal warrant for sanitary-ware from Prince Edward in the eighteen eighties and creating a business empire that lasted until 1963.
Should your attention be entirely absorbed by this matchless parade of eight Crapper’s Valveless Waste Preventers, do not neglect to admire the sparkling procession of urinals opposite by George Jennings (1810-1882) – celebrated as the inventor of the public toilet. 827,280 visitors paid a penny for the novelty of using his Monkey Closets in the retiring rooms at the Great Exhibition of 1851, giving rise to the popular euphemism, “spend a penny,” still in use today in overly polite circles.
Once composure and physical comfort are restored, you may wish to visit the chapel to say a prayer of thanks or, as I like to do, visit John Wesley’s house seeking inspiration in the life of the great preacher. Wesley preached a doctrine of love to those who might not enter a church, and campaigned for prison reform and the abolition of slavery, giving more than forty thousand sermons in his lifetime, often several a day and many in the open air – travelling between them on horseback. In his modest house, where he once ate at the same table as his servants, you can see the tiny travelling lamp that he carried with him to avoid falling off his horse (as he did frequently), his nightcap, his shoes, his spectacles, his robe believed to have been made out of a pair of old curtains, the teapot that Josiah Wedgwood designed for him, and the exercising chair that replicated the motion of horse-riding, enabling Wesley to keep his thigh muscles taut when not on the road.
A visit to the memorial garden at the rear of the chapel to examine Wesley’s tomb will reveal that familiar term from the toilet bowl “The Venerable” graven in stone in 1791 to describe John Wesley himself, which prompts the question whether this was where Thomas Crapper got the idea for the name of his contraption, honouring John Wesley in sanitary-ware.
Let us thank the Almighty if we are ever caught short on the City Rd because, due to the good works of the venerable Thomas Crapper and the venerable John Wesley, relief and consolation for both body and soul are readily to hand at the Lord’s Convenience.
Nineteenth century fixtures by Thomas Crapper, still in perfect working order
Put your Trust in the Lord
Cubicles for private Worship
Stalls for individual Prayer
In Memoriam George Jennings, inventor of the public toilet
Upon John Wesley’s Tomb
John Wesley’s Chapel
John Wesley’s exercise chair to simulate the motion of horseriding
John Wesley excused himself unexpectedly from the table …
New wallpaper in John Wesley’s parlour from an eighteenth century design at Marble Hill House
The view from John Wesley’s window across to Bunhill Fields where, when there were no leaves upon the trees, he could see the white tombstone marking his mother’s grave.
Learn about John Wesley’s chapel at www.wesleyschapel.org.uk
The Wallpapers Of Fournier St
One house in Fournier St has wallpapers dating from 1690 until 1960. This oldest piece of wallpaper was already thirty years old when it was pasted onto the walls of the new house built by joiner William Taylor in 1721, providing evidence – as if it were ever needed – that people have always prized beautiful old things.
John Nicolson, the current owner of the house, keeps his treasured collection of wallpaper preserved between layers of tissue in chronological order, revealing both the history and tastes of his predecessors. First, there were the wealthy Huguenot silk weavers who lived in the house until they left for Scotland in the nineteenth century, when it was subdivided as rented dwellings for Jewish people fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe. Yet, as well as illustrating the precise social history of this location in Spitalfields, the wider significance of the collection is that it tells the story of English wallpaper – through examples from a single house.
When John Nicolson bought it in 1995, the house had been uninhabited since the nineteen thirties, becoming a Jewish tailoring workshop and then an Asian sweatshop before reaching the low point of dereliction, repossessed and rotting. John undertook a ten year renovation programme, moving into the attic and then colonising the rooms as they became habitable, one by one. Behind layers of cladding applied to the walls, the original fabric of the house was uncovered and John ensured that no materials left the building, removing nothing that predated 1970. A leaky roof had destroyed the plaster which came off the walls as he uncovered them, but John painstakingly salvaged all the fragments of wallpaper and all the curios lost by the previous inhabitants between the floorboards too.
“I wanted it to look like a three hundred year old house that had been lovingly cared for and aged gracefully over three centuries,” said John, outlining his ambition for the endeavour, “- but it had been trashed, so the challenge was to avoid either the falsification of history or a slavish recreation of one particular era.” The house had undergone two earlier renovations, to update the style of the panelling in the seventeen-eighties and to add a shopfront in the eighteen-twenties. John chose to restore the facade as a domestic frontage, but elsewhere his work has been that of careful repair to create a home that retains its modest domesticity and humane proportions, appreciating the qualities that make these Spitalfields houses distinctive.
The ancient wallpaper fragments are as delicate as butterfly wings now, but each one was once a backdrop to life as it was played out through the ages in this tottering old house. I can envisage the seventeenth century wallpaper with its golden lozenges framing dog roses would have gleamed by candlelight and brightened a dark drawing room through the Winter months with its images of Summer flowers, and I can also imagine the warm glow of the brown-hued Victorian designs under gaslight in the tiny rented rooms, a century later within the same house. When I think of the countless hours I have spent staring at the wallpaper in my time, I can only wonder at the number of day dreams that were once projected upon these three centuries of wallpaper.
Flowers and foliage are the constant motifs throughout all these papers, confirming that the popular fashion for floral designs on the wall has extended for over three hundred years already. Sometimes the flowers are sparser, sometimes more stylised but, in general, I think we may surmise that, when it comes to choosing wallpaper, people like to surround themselves with flowers. Wallpaper offers an opportunity to inhabit an everlasting bower, a garden that never fades or requires maintenance. And maybe a pattern of flowers is more forgiving than a geometric design? When it comes to concealing the damp patches, or where the baby vomited, or where the mistress threw the wine glass at the wall, floral is the perfect English compromise of the bucolic and the practical.
Two surprises in this collection of wallpaper contradict the assumed history of Spitalfields. One is a specimen from 1895 that has been traced through the Victoria & Albert Museum archive and discovered to be very expensive – sixpence a yard, equivalent to week’s salary – entirely at odds with the assumption that these rented rooms were inhabited exclusively by the poor at that time. It seems that then, as now, there were those prepared to scrimp for the sake of enjoying exhorbitant wallpaper. The other surprise is a modernist Scandanavian design by Eliel Saarinen from the nineteen twenties – we shall never know how this got there. John Nicolson likes to think that people who appreciate good design have always recognised the beauty of these exemplary old houses in Fournier St, which would account for the presence of both the expensive 1895 paper and the Saarinen pattern from 1920, and I see no reason to discount this theory.
I leave you to take a look at this selection of fragments from John’s archive and imagine for yourself the human dramas witnessed by these humble wallpapers of Fournier St.
Fragments from the seventeen-twenties
Hand-painted wallpaper from the seventeen-eighties
Printed wallpaper from the seventeen-eighties
Eighteen-twenties
Eighteen-forties
Mid-nineteenth century fake wood panelling wallpaper, as papered over real wooden panelling
Wallpaper by William Morris, 1880
Expensive wallpaper at sixpence a yard from 1885
1895
Late nineteenth century, in a lugubrious Arts & Crafts style
A frieze dating from 1900
In an Art Nouveau style c. 1900
Modernist design by Finnish designer Eliel Saarinen from the nineteen-twenties
Nineteen-sixties floral
Vinyl wallpaper from the nineteen-sixties
Items that John Nicolson found under the floorboards of his eighteenth-century house in Fournier St, including a wedding ring, pipes, buttons, coins, cotton reels, spinning tops, marbles, broken china and children’s toys. Note the child’s leather boot, the pair of jacks found under the front step, and the blue bottle of poison complete with syringe discovered in a sealed-up medicine cupboard which had been papered over. Horseshoes were found hidden throughout the fabric of the house to bring good luck, and the jacks and child’s shoe may also have been placed there for similar reasons.
Schrödinger, Shoreditch Church Cat
Schrödinger, the incumbent feline
At the end of last summer, Robin Gore-Hatton, Verger of St Leonard’s in Shoreditch, noticed a skinny cat hanging around the portico and gave him food and water. “He was thin and hungry, so I took pity on him,” Robin admitted to me.
A lithe and limber creature, Schrödinger disposed of the church’s mouse problem with alacrity, thus earning his keep in exchange for services in pest control. “Like most cats, I realise he adopted his owner rather than the other way around,” Robin added, acknowledging that Schrödinger has now established himself as a permanent fixture at the church.
Conscientious in his duties, Schrödinger may usually be found at his customary position sitting discreetly beneath a table just inside the door where he observes the constant flow of visitors, retreating under the pews when crowds arrive. “He’s shy,” confirmed Robin, “but it’s like he’s biding his time to assert his presence.” Certainly, frayed corners of two hessian-covered notice boards in the side aisle attest to Schrödinger marking his territory.
“It does feel like he’s the boss,” Robin confessed to me with a helpless grin, as we strolled around the church with Schrödinger following close at his ankles in expectation of dinner time. “Only I feed him,” Robin whispered in covert explanation,“otherwise everyone would give him food and he’d grow fat.”
Yet in spite of his usual feline qualities, there is also an air of mystery to this implacable creature that is capable of vanishing and reappearing without explanation. “Sometimes at night, he disappears,” Robin confided, “and then I find him in the morning asleep in the crypt – I think he feels at home down there, which is something we share in common.”
Schrödinger and Robin Hatton-Gore, Verger at St Leonard’s – “It does feel like he’s the boss”
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The Cats of Spitalfields (Part One)
The Cats of Spitalfields (Part Two)
Blackie, the Last Spitalfields Market Cat
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