Old London Bridges
Traffic from Covent Garden Market crosses Waterloo Bridge, c. 1924
London owes its very existence to bridges, since the location of the capital upon the banks of the Thames was defined by the lowest crossing point of the river. No wonder that the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society collected this edifying series of pictures of bridges on glass plates to use in their magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute.
Yet until the eighteenth century, the story of London’s bridges was solely that of London Bridge. The Romans created the first wooden crossing of Thames close to the current site of London Bridge and the settlement upon the northern shore grew to become the City of London. When the Saxons tried to regain the City from the Danes in the eleventh century, they attached ropes to London Bridge and used their boats to dislodge the piers, thus originating the myth celebrated in the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is Falling Down.”
The first stone London Bridge was built by Peter de Colechurch in 1209 and lasted over six hundred years, surviving the Great Fire and numerous rebuildings of the houses and shops that clustered upon its structure. When traffic upon grew too crowded in 1722, a “keep left” rule was instated that later became the pattern for all roads in this country and, by 1763, all the houses were removed to provide extra clearance. Then, in 1831, John Rennie’s famous bridge of Dartmoor granite replaced old London Bridge until it was shipped off to Arizona in the nineteen-sixties to make way for the current concrete bridge, with its centrally heated pavements and hollow structure that permits essential pipes and cables to cross the Thames easily.
After London Bridge, next came Putney Bridge in 1726 and then Westminster Bridge in 1738 – until today we have a line of bridges, holding the north and south banks of London together tightly like laces on a boot. The hero of London’s bridges was unquestionably John Rennie (1761-1821) who pioneered the combination or iron and stone in bridge building and designed London Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Southwark Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge, although only the Serpentine Bridge remains today as his memorial.
Even to the seasoned Londoner, there is something unfailingly exhilarating about sitting on top of a bus, erupting from the narrow city streets onto one of the bridges and discovering yourself suspended high above the vast River Thames, it is one of the definitive experiences of our city.
Tower Bridge took eight year to construct, 1886 -1894
Tower Bridge with barges, c. 1910
St. Paul’s Cathedral from Southwark Bridge, c. 1925
Southwark Bridge, c. 1925
Old wooden bridge at Putney, 1880. The second bridge to be built after London Bridge, constructed in 1726 and replaced by the current stone structure in 1886.
On Tower Bridge, 1905.
Tower Bridge, c. 1910
John Rennie’s London Bridge of 1831 viewed from the waterside, c. 1910
London Bridge, c. 1930. Sold to Robert Mc Culloch in 1968 and re-assembled in Arizona in 1971.
The former bridgekeeper’s house on Tower Bridge, c. 1900
Wandsworth Bridge by Julian Tolme, c. 1910 (demolished in 1937)
Waterloo Bridge, c. 1910. The increased river flow created by the demolition of old London Bridge required temporary reinforcements to Waterloo Bridge from 1884.
Waterloo Bridge, c. 1910
Under an arch of Waterloo Bridge, c. 1910
View under Waterloo Bridge towards Hungerford Bridge, Westminster Bridge, & Palace of Westminster, c. 1910
Westminster Bridge, c. 1910. The third bridge, built over the Thames after London and Putney Bridges, in 1739-1750. The current bridge by Thomas Page of 1862 is painted green to match the leather seats in the House of Commons.
Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
Hammersmith Bridge with Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race, 1928. Dixon, Appleby & Thorne’s bridge was built in 1887.
Battersea Bridge, c. 1910 Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s bridge was built in 1879.
Battersea Bridge from waterside, c. 1910
Blackfriars Bridge, c. 1910
Cannon St Railway Bridge, c. 1910. Designed by John Hawkshaw and John Wolfe-Barry for the South Eastern Railway in 1866.
Serpentine Bridge, 1910. Designed by John Rennie in the eighteen-twenties.
Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
On Hammersmith Bridge, c. 1910
Victoria Embankment, c. 1910
London Bridge, c. 1910
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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The Gentle Author opens Tower Bridge
The What Pub Next? Club
“I only come here to make your lives happier, I don’t enjoy it”
I was delighted to be invited along to Simpsons Chop House, the oldest tavern in the City of London established 1757, to join the members of the “What Pub Next?” Club. Believed to have been founded in the nineteen-fifties, this venerable society of wags once had a membership of over three hundred who used to visit all the bars in the City one after another, encouraged by the cry of “What Pub Next?”
Yet, even though the “What Pub Next?” Club was officially disbanded a couple of years ago – even though there are only a handful of members left alive – even though there are no new members, no junior members, only senior members in their eighties and nineties – even though they no longer stray to any other pubs, adopting Simpsons Chop House (thirty seven and a half, Cornhill) as their headquarters – even though the question “What Pub Next?” is no longer asked – such is the intoxicating nature of this fellowship, these rebel diehards continue to put on their club ties and gather for old time’s sake.
Escaping the icy gusts in Cornhill, I walked through Ball Court and discovered the eighteenth century edifice of Simpsons looming overhead, then I climbed down a windy stair to join the members of the “What Pub Next?” Club, who were merrily clinking tankards and celebrating as if Christmas had come already. So pervasive was the sense of mischief and fun, that whilst I could enjoy the experience offered by the “What Pub Next?” Club at once, appreciating the exact the nature of the organisation proved to be more elusive. Several original members squinted and strained when I asked them if they could remember when they first came along or if they could recall how it started. The genesis of the “What Pub Next?” Club is lost, it seems, in a haze of conviviality.
“I’m not sure anyone knows when it began,” queried ninety-one-year-old Douglas, whose daughters had dropped him off while they did their Christmas shopping. “It had to be a Bass pub, they had to serve draft beer,” interposed his friend “Ginger” helpfully, gesticulating with a sausage. “And we had to drink a spoonful of Worcestershire sauce as an initiation,” contributed Brian with a chuckle.
“By Jingo, let us have what we are here for!” exclaimed Pat authoritatively, the most senior member at ninety-two, reaching out for a mustard smothered sausage on a stick.“I know everyone here but don’t for a minute think that I can recall their names,” he informed me, “because somewhere along the way, I lost my memory – I can remember their name as long as as it’s Brian.” A comment which was the catalyst for general hilarity. “I only come here to make your lives happier, I don’t enjoy it,” he continued, adopting a stern tone, waving his hands around and asking rhetorically, “Can you enjoy life without laughing? Life’s far too serious not to be taken lightly.” It was a maxim that could easily be the Club motto.
Originating among employees of the Australia & New Zealand Bank who wanted to learn about British culture whilst posted to London before they returned to the antipodes, the “What Pub Next?” Club quickly became a social focus for hundreds of City workers in the nineteen-sixties. All that was required for membership was a tie – a tie that was ceremonially cut off with giant shears belonging to Mr True, the tailor at the Bell in Cannon St, if members left to return to their country of origin. These stumps of ties were nailed to wall in the cellar of Simpsons along with pairs of knickers acquired by undisclosed means, I was assured. A fact that was the cue to recall Sid Cumberland, who had his little finger cut off by mistake during the tie ceremony – though fortunately the surgeons at Barts were able to sew it on again and Sid returned safely to New Zealand with only a crooked digit as evidence of his misadventures in London. The late Ken Wickes is commemorated as president and founder of the “What Pub Next?” Club by a brass plate over the bar. “Every year he resigned and every year he was re-elected,” they told me affectionately.
By now, the port was being passed around in a pewter tankard and – with so few members of the Club left – it was circulating like a horse on a merry-go-round. As a consequence, the momentum and eloquence of the conversation accelerated too, so that the story of the WPNC trip to the Bass brewery and the account of the WPNC Morris dancing on the banks of the Stour passed me by. Yet I had grasped enough of an impression of the glorious history of the noble Club, enough to understand why they should all wish to keep meeting and celebrating for ever.
“I worked fifty years in the City and I’ve still got my bowler hat and brolly at home. I remember the first thing I did when I started work at the insurance exchange in 1962 was go and buy a bowler, “ Brian confided to me with a sentimental smile as he passed the Port back and forth – turning contemplative and pausing for a moment to ask, “Do they still wear bowler hats?”
Jean – “I have a garter made of a club tie, it only goes to my knee now but it used to go all the way up!”
The WPN club tie with its discreet logo is de rigeur on these occasions.
Jean Churcher, the celebrated raconteuse of Simpsons Chop House.
Quaffing the Port from a pewter tankard.
Happy Christmas from the members of the “What Pub Next?” Club!
Cheese on toast with Worcestershire Sauce is the traditional conclusion of proceedings at the WPN Club.
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Signs Of Old London
The little wooden midshipman outside Solomon Gillis’ chandlery, 157 Leadenhall St
Even though most of the signs of old London were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, a few created just after that date survive today in the City – anachronisms affixed to modern buildings, as if they were Penny Blacks stuck onto Jiffy padded envelopes. Yet in the Bishopsgate Institute archive, I found plenty of atmospheric pictures of curious stone plaques which lasted into the era of photography, only to be destroyed by the blitz and subsequent redevelopment.
It was Charles I who gave people the right to hang out signs as they pleased, when once they were restricted to innkeepers – “for the better finding out such citizens’ dwellings, shops, pubs or occupations, without impediment, molestation, or interruption to their heirs or successors.” An elaborate language of symbols quickly grew in the common understanding, such as a dragon for an apothecary, a sugar loaf for a grocer, a wheatsheaf for a baker, a frying pan for a confectioner, and – as still seen in Spitalfields today – a spool for a silk weaver.
As time went by, the meanings of the signs became more complex and arcane as shops changed ownership but retained the signs as identifiers of the buildings. James Maddox, the coffin maker at St Olaves had the symbol of three coffins and a sugarloaf, the sugarloaf because it was a former grocers and three coffins as his personal device. Opposite St Dunstan’s in Fleet St, a sign of three squirrels first put up by Henry Pinkley the goldsmith in 1649, was appropriated by the bankers who moved in afterwards, and this symbol of the three squirrels continued to be used by the National Westminster Bank until the mid-twentieth century.
Lombard St was once famed for its array of magnificent signs, and eighteenth century prints show quaint symbols hung upon elaborate wrought iron brackets outside every single premises in Cornhill and Cheapside. Anticipating our modern concern with brands and logos, these devices suited the city before streets were numbered and when many of the populace did not read. But during heavy weather and in strong wind, these monstrous signs creaked and groaned – and, in 1718, a huge sign in Bride St collapsed killing four people and taking part of the shop front with it. Such was the severity of the problem of the forest of hanging signs crowding the streets of London, that a commission was appointed in 1762 to take them all down and fix them onto the shopfronts – thereby creating the modern notion of the fascia sign declaring the identity of the premises.
“The Commissioners are empowered to take down and remove all signs and emblems, used to denote the trade, occupation or calling – any sign posts, sign boards, sign irons, balconies, penthouses, show boards, spouts and gutters projecting into the streets etc, and all other encroachments and projections whatsoever in the said cities and liberties – and cause the same, or such parts thereof as they think fit to be affixed or placed on the front of the houses, shops, alehouses or buildings to which they belong.”
Street numbers were only in partial use at the beginning of the eighteenth century, becoming widespread by the end of the century as a standardised system to identify properties. Although many were reluctant to give up the language of signs and symbols, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the signs were commonly replaced by the familiar pattern of a board with signwriting above the shopwindow. Most of the decorative signs to found in the City of London today are pastiches created a hundred years ago as nostalgic tributes to a bygone age, though two favourites of mine are the golden owl on the House of Fraser, facing South over London Bridge, and the figure of Atlas holding up the globe on the exterior of Barclays in Cheapside.
Just three signs remain in common usage, the barbers’ pole (with its bloody red and white stripe recalling when barbers were also surgeons), the chemists’ pestle and mortar, and the pawnbrokers’ three balls – originally blue, they turned gold in the early nineteenth century and are said to be based upon the crest of the Dukes of Medici, itself derived from coins taken by Crusaders from Byzantium.
At the sign of the Fox in Lombard St.
At the sign of the Three Kings in Lombard St.
At the sign of the Half Moon in Holywell St, off the Strand.
A physician.
A locksmith.
At the sign of the Lamb & Flag
The grasshopper, symbol of industry and personal emblem of Sir Thomas Gresham who founded the Royal Exchange, is to be found all over the City of London even today.
At the sign of Three Squirrels in Fleet St.
At the sign of the Bull & Mouth in Aldgate.
This was the symbol of the Cutlers.
Child’s bank at the sign of the Marigold in Temple Bar.
In Ely Place, off Hatton Garden – this mitre came from an episcopal palace and was set into the wall of a public house.
The maid of the Mercer’s company is still to be seen in Corbet Court off Gracechurch St.
An old sign that remains in situ outside St Paul’s tube station.“When ye have sought the Citty round, yet still this is the highest ground. August 27th 1698”
“- an old sign affixed to a modern building, like a Penny Black stuck onto a Jiffy padded envelope.”
Archive photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Contemplating Christ Church, Spitalfields
Owen Hopkins, Curator of Architecture at the Royal Academy & author of FROM THE SHADOWS, The Architecture & Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor, published today, considers the enduring charisma of Christ Church, Spitalfields.
A shadow appearing on a great expanse of stone, the early morning light pouring through a dirty window, a brass door handle worn smooth by centuries of use, the musty smell of an old room, the faint echo of steps climbing a staircase – we experience architecture everyday. Yet most of the time we do not notice it.
In some ways, we should be glad of this. The buildings around us, even those we work or even live in, need to blend quickly into the background to allow us to go about our daily business. The last thing we need is a building constantly reminding us of its presence through bling-bling cladding, a gratuitously curving façade or its dumb oversized hulk. Fortunately, for the moment at least, most architecture is essentially background architecture. Rarely does a building stop you in your tracks and demand your attention. Rarely does a building hit you in the gut. Rarely does a building change how you see the world around you. That Christ Church, Spitalfields by Nicholas Hawksmoor does all these things – and more – marks it out for me as truly special.
Over the course of writing my book about Hawksmoor and the various ways he and his buildings have been neglected, abused and celebrated since in his death in 1736, I have probably exhausted the vocabulary of words that can be used to describe the oddly affecting power of his architecture. Words simply cannot do justice to the raw essence of his gigantic compositions in stone. I always imagine the sensation of being confronted by Christ Church at the end of Brushfield St to be a little like how the first Grand Tourists must have felt encountering the Parthenon or the Pantheon, or even the Pyramids – monuments of antiquity that they might have heard about and even seen depictions, but of which the effect in reality is of a rather different nature.
So, in a way Christ Church is akin to our own Roman ruin standing in Spitalfields, though now in a far from ruinous state. If the mausoleum that Hawksmoor designed atop a lonely Yorkshire hill at Castle Howard is the equivalent of the great Greek Doric temples at Paestum, then Christ Church is perhaps redolent of the Forum Romanum – the Temple of Saturn or perhaps the Temple of Castor & Pollux. Christ Church appears as if it was always there, before history and before time. It holds its own with the great buildings of Baroque neoclassical Europe, those of Fischer von Erlach, Boullée, Ledoux and Bernini. But it is another master that Hawksmoor probably bears closest comparison: the enigmatic Francesco Borromini, like Hawksmoor a creator of buildings that strike the mind and the emotions, and an inspirer of dark tales and mystery.
Born in the mid nineteen-eighties, I never saw Christ Church in its legendary ruined state, when its powers were arguably even more intense. Growing up, I knew nothing of Hawksmoor and only a little of Sir Christopher Wren, having once made that startling ascent to the dome of St Paul’s and then the corresponding one to the top of the Monument. Studying History of Art at university, I was by chance assigned to a course on English Baroque architecture. Looking at black and white photographs of Hawksmoor’s churches in books, I could not believe these buildings were here in London, so I immediately set off in search of them. Christ Church, the great gateway to the East End, was the first I encountered and the one I became the most familiar with, always making a point of stopping by on my regular visits to Brick Lane market, then and now a pilgrimage for the young and new in London. The longer I looked at it, the more I became mesmerised by its stark geometric plainness, the striking power of its composition and the extraordinary way, nearly three centuries after its completion, it still dominates its surroundings, physically and psychologically.
It is easy to forget that a building like Christ Church is the product of a particular time and place, and – dare I say it – a particular architectural brief. It represents one of the finest examples of what since the nineteen-fifties has been known as the English Baroque – the brief flowering, around the turn of the eighteenth century, of an architecture conceived in terms of mass, of architecture almost as a sculptural entity. Along with Sir John Vanbrugh, Thomas Archer, and to some degree Wren and James Gibbs, Hawksmoor was one the English Baroque’s main protagonists, and the one – it is often considered – who pushed its ideals the furthest.
Despite the name, the English Baroque really had nothing really to do with the Italian Baroque of Bernini and Borromini, and only very little with developments in Paris. England was a Protestant country and, to some degree, isolated from the cultural developments of Catholic Europe. The English Baroque was, therefore, sui generis, and directly traceable to Wren’s office in the sixteen-nineties – a relatively large and cosmopolitan melting pot of architectural ideas and invention to which Hawksmoor was absolutely integral. Almost nothing is known of Hawksmoor’s life before he entered Wren’s office around 1680 – a fact or lack of facts, made all the more tantalising by his meteoric rise in just over a decade to become Wren’s leading draughtsman and designer, and executor of buildings in his own right.
By 1711, when he was working with Vanbrugh at Castle Howard and then Blenheim Palace, Hawksmoor was arguably the best trained architect Britain had ever produced and one of its more accomplished. It was natural for him to become involved with the Commission founded in that year, charged with building fifty new churches in London’s new suburbs. The backdrop to this was London’s expansion since the Great Fire beyond its old medieval walls into Bloomsbury and the West End, Bermondsey and Deptford to the south, and Spitalfields and along the river through Wapping and Limehouse to the east. The existing churches in these areas were unable to cope with the huge increases in population and many residents were falling into the arms of dissenting groups: Presbyterians, Anabaptists and the like. Parts of these new suburbs were smart and well-to-do, but the majority – particularly to the east – were poor, with some streets consisting of little more than a series of hovels leant up against one another. Some centuries were to pass before London was to lose its reputation for disease, poverty and vice.
Looking back, it is no surprise that London’s expansion was a source of considerable anxiety for the city’s political and religious authorities, an anxiety they believed could be assuaged by a string of new churches. The brief was twofold: buildings that could accommodate large numbers of worshippers and, at the same time, act as beacons in the cityscape, signifying social and moral control over all they surveyed. In my analysis, it is this latter stipulation, which gets us to the core of why Hawksmoor’s churches, Christ Church included, look the way they do.
The London that burnt in 1666 was largely a city of timber and thatch. The city that re-emerged in the following decades was one of brick, and even the houses of immigrant Huguenot cloth-weavers that survive around Spitalfields were adorned with classical columns and pilasters and elaborate, classically-inspired door-cases. While the lavish funding provided by the 1711 Commission would allow the churches to stand out in terms of scale and materials, utilising white Portland stone rather than brick, Hawksmoor’s role was to ensure they would do so in their design too, as an architecture of authority.
Straightforward classical architecture was not an option. Instead, Hawksmoor looked to architectural history, to his own native Gothic and to the architecture of the early Christians and the Middle East, which he knew from engravings and written accounts. It was Hawksmoor’s genius to combine these disparate sources and references in single compositions that have coherence and integrity, while also being rich and resonant. At Christ Church, he took these influences – and architecture itself – back to first principles, punching windows through smooth masonry walls, enlarging the usually domestic-scaled, three-part Palladian window form into the Roman triumphal gateway of the west front and topping the whole arrangement with a variation on a medieval broach spire. Standing at the base of the west end tower, it is hard to know if the tower appears to be falling away from you or more worryingly falling towards you, an effect I have not experienced with any other building.
None of Hawksmoor’s contemporaries and only a few architects since have achieved this feat of imbuing a static structure with such energy and dynamism. Looking across Hawksmoor’s work, we see an innate sculptural feel for form and mass, and for the capacity of stone to carry meaning and metaphor. His churches are often said to appear Gothic or medieval, yet he conjured these allusions without resorting to a single pointed arch or buttress. Their Gothic-ness emerges through their massing, just as, to our modern eyes, they allude to the concrete constructions of post-war sculptural Brutalism, such as those by Denys Lasdun, Gottfried Böhm or Louis Kahn. It is striking that after all this time Christ Church is still defying our expectations and forcing us to re-think how we see the architectural world around us.
Despite the genius of his work, after his death Hawksmoor was overlooked and largely forgotten until recent decades. This was mirrored in the fate of his buildings, which for most of their history have rarely been understood, let alone admired. Tragically for Hawksmoor, this began even before his death, as the English Baroque was superseded by the Palladian style, and for the final years of his life he became the last, lonely figure of a generation the Palladians sought to erase.
During the mid eighteen-sixties Christ Church underwent substantial alterations under the direction of Ewan Christian, the architect best known for designing the National Portrait Gallery. Christian ripped out the galleries and pews, and changed the window configurations on the sides of the church. By the nineteen-fifties, with the congregation dwindled, the church was shut. Demolition became a real risk and the Hawksmoor Committee, which had formed to raise awareness of the plight of Hawksmoor’s works, managed to raise funds to repair the roof, largely through the sale of St John, Smith Square. The mantle was then taken on by the Friends of Christ Church, Spitalfields in 1976, who, working with the architect Red Mason, drove the near thirty-year restoration campaign that returned the church to its original configuration, including the dramatic reinstatement of the galleries.
The restored interior, perhaps, lacks the romance of the earlier ruinous space where evocative classical concerts were held in the nineteen-seventies, but it more than makes up for it in splendour. Since the completion of the main restoration in 2004, work has continued to restore the organ (reinstalled earlier this year) and to renovate the crypt. The latter project, led by Dow Jones Architects, stripped out the numerous accretions in a space which has been used for everything from an air-raid shelter to a dormitory for alcoholic men, before sensitively inserting a cafe, events kitchen, lounge space and small chapel, taking architectural cues from Hawksmoor’s nave above. With the public opening of the crypt this month, the entire building is now modernised and fully restored. However, unlike other buildings that have undergone such restorations, I sense that Christ Church’s history is far from over and it will continue to perplex and inspire whoever cuts across its path for centuries to come.
John Scott gives the inaugural concert on the restored Richard Bridge organ June 3oth 2015
Work in progress on the restoration of the crypt
The completed restoration of the crypt
Christ Church viewed through the ruins of the London Fruit & Wool Exchange
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A View of Christ Church Spitalfields
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Maria Pellicci’s Christmas Ravioli
Elide Pellicci looks down upon Maria & Nevio Pellicci
If you should spot a light, gleaming after hours in the back kitchen at E. Pellicci in the Bethnal Green Rd at this time of year, it will be Maria Pellicci making the Christmas ravioli for her family as she has done each year since 1962.
Maria originates from the same tiny village of Casciana near Lucca in Tuscany as her late husband Nevio Pellicci (senior). And, to her surprise, when Maria first arrived in London she discovered his mother Elide Pellicci, who came over in 1899, was already making ravioli to the same recipe that she knew from home in Italy.
Elide is the E. Pellicci celebrated in chrome letters upon the primrose yellow art deco facade of London’s best-loved family-run cafe, the woman who took over the running of the cafe in the thirties after the death of her husband Priamo who worked there from 1900 – which means we may be assured that the Christmas ravioli have been made here by the Pelliccis in this same spot for over a century.
Thus it was a great honour that Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I were the very first outsiders to be invited to witness and record this time-hallowed ritual in Bethnal Green. But I regret to inform you that this particular ravioli is only ever made for the family, which means the only way you can get to taste it is if you marry into the Pelliccis.
“It’s a Tuscan Christmas tradition – Ravioli in Brodo – we only do it once a year and every family has their own recipe,” Maria admitted to me as she turned the handle of the machine and her son Nevio Pellici (junior) reached out to manage the rapidly emerging yellow ribbon of pasta. “My mother and my grandmother used to make it, and I’ve been doing it all my life.”
In recent years, Maria has been quietly tutoring Nevio in this distinctive culinary art that is integral to the Pellicci family. “I was going with the boys to see Naples play against Arsenal tonight, but that’s down the drain,” he declared with good grace – revealing he had only discovered earlier in the day that his mother had decided the time was right for making the special ravioli, ready for the whole family to eat in chicken broth on Christmas Day.
“He’s a good boy,” Maria declared with a tender smile, acknowledging his sacrifice, “years ago I used to stay here on my own making the ravioli until eleven o’clock at night.”
“She’s trying to hand it over to me,” Nevio confirmed proudly.
“Nevio’s good and he’s got the patience,” Maria added encouragingly, as Nevio lowered the pasta carefully onto the ravioli mould.
“I’ve got the rubbish job, I have to fill the ravioli,” he complained in mock self-pity, grinning with pleasure as the two of them set to work with nimble fingers to fill the ravioli. Although the precise ingredients are a fiercely guarded secret, Maria confided to me that the filling comprises beef and pork with Parmigiano and Percorino, along with other undisclosed seasonings. “Everyone does it differently,” she confessed modestly, making light of the lifetime of refining that lies behind her personal recipe.
Already Maria had cooked the mixture slowly for a hour and added a couple of eggs to bind it, and – now it had cooled – she and Nevio were transferring it into the ravioli mould. “We used to do this by hand,” she informed me, turning contemplative as she watched Nevio expertly produce another ribbon of yellow pasta to sit on top of the mould. “We rolled the pasta out on the table before we had the machine. Sometimes, large families used to fill the whole table rolling out enough pasta to feed everyone on Christmas Day. When my mother was small, they were poor and lived in a hut but they had their own flour and eggs, so they could always make pasta.”
It was Nevio’s task to turn the mould over and press it down hard onto the table, binding the layers of pasta together. Then, with intense concentration as Maria waited expectantly, he peeled the ravioli away from the mould, revealing a sheet that looked like a page of neatly upholstered postage stamps. Making swift work of it, Maria wielded her little metal wheel by its wooden handle, separating the individual ravioli and transferring them to a metal tray.
In the kitchen of the empty restaurant, mother and son surveyed their fine handiwork with satisfaction. Each mould produced forty ravioli and, in the course of the evening, they made eight batches of ravioli, thus producing three hundred and sixty ravioli to delight the gathered Pelliccis on Christmas Day – and thereby continuing a family tradition that extends over a century. Yet for Maria, Ravioli in Brodo is more than a memento of her origin in Tuscany, making it here in the East End over all this time incarnates this place as her home.
“I am happy here and I know everyone in Bethnal Green,” she admitted to me, “It’s my village and it’s my family.”
Maria & Nevio rolling out the pasta
Maria sprinkles semolina in the mould to stop the pasta sticking
Maria & Nevio placing the meat filling in the ravioli
Nevio presses down on the ravioli mould
The ravioli are turned out from the mould
Maria cuts out the individual ravioli
Over three hundred ravioli ready for Christmas Day
Elide & Priamo, the Pellicci ancestors look down in approval upon the observance of making Christmas ravioli for more than a century in Bethnal Green
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
E.Pellicci, 332 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 0AG
You may like to read my other Pellicci stories
Maria Pellicci, The Meatball Queen of Bethnal Green
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits ( Part One)
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits (Part Two)
News From Norton Folgate
British Land’s original proposed demolition of Norton Folgate
British Land’s revised proposed demolition of Norton Folgate
Can you spot the difference between the two pictures above? One is the level of demolition proposed in British Land’s previous scheme for Norton Folgate and one is their recently revised version.
Back in March, I reported on British Land’s proposal to demolish the attractive old warehouses in Blossom St, preserving only piers of bricks on the facade and recycling an unspecified amount of the fabric in their new building, an approach which Historic England dignified with the phrase ‘sensitive restoration.’
When Spitalfields Trust challenged this destruction of the warehouses, British Land claimed they were preserving them – which makes it paradoxical that now British Land have announced they are ‘retaining’ the warehouses as a concession to those who objected to their scheme.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London has ‘called in’ the British Land Norton Folgate scheme which was rejected unanimously by Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee in July. On 18th January, the Mayor will stage a public hearing at City Hall at which he will determine the decision upon the application himself. This will be the thirteenth such ‘call in’ and the previous twelve have all been determined in favour of the developer.
Meanwhile, the Spitalfields Trust have launched a Judicial Review into the legitimacy of the ‘call in’ and billionaire Troels Povlson has offered to buy the site so that the Trust may implement their alternative scheme by Burrell Foley Fisher, which is based upon the principal of minimal architectural intervention, utilising Norton Folgate to serve the needs of local people by providing genuinely affordable workspaces and housing.
British Land’s amended proposal for Norton Folgate is still an overblown development that will destroy an historic neighbourhood to replace it with a hideous corporate plaza. We need you to help us stop this, by writing letters of objection to point out that it remains unacceptable. You will find a simple guide to how to object below.
You can read Alec Forshaw’s full assessment of British Land’s revised scheme on Save Norton Folgate facebook page
Norton Folgate as it is today
Massing of the British Land development
The Spitalfields Trust scheme by John Burrell of Burrell Foley Fisher
Spitalfields Trust scheme looking from Norton Folgate – drawn by Lucinda Rogers
Spitalfields Trust Scheme, looking along Fleur de Lis St – drawn by Lucinda Rogers
Spitalfields Trust Scheme, looking down Elder St from Commercial St – drawn by Lucinda Rogers
This is a simple guide to how to write to the Greater London Authority objecting to British Land’s amended scheme for Norton Folgate.
You can write by email to james.keogh@london.gov.uk (please also provide your postal address in the email) or by post to James Keogh, Greater London Authority, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London, SE1 2AA. Please copy your email to Tower Hamlets Council beth.eite@towerhamlets.gov.uk
Your email or letter needs to arrive before 14th December.
It is important that you use your own words but here are a few relevant points to consider when objecting:
1. Tower Hamlets Council refused the application unanimously on three grounds – harm to the character and appearance of the Conservation Area, the low level of housing and the low level of Affordable Housing. These objections still stand.
2. The amendments, although welcome, are very small in comparison with the overall scale of the development.
3. The level of destruction within this important Conservation Area is still huge.
4. The historic layout of courtyards and lanes, the fine grain of the area, will still be destroyed.
5. Our original objection to the scheme criticised the treatment of a dozen buildings, of which this amendment addresses only one. For instance, the two eighteenth-century buildings still standing on Norton Folgate itself are being removed – number 14 in its entirety and all of number 15 except its front elevation. Numbers 16-19 Norton Folgate will still have the ground floor hollowed out to provide a passage entrance way to the new development.
6. Just as originally proposed, the scheme remains an overblown megastructure with large office floor plates, still rising to as many as fourteen storeys. All within a Conservation Area, where the prevailing height is four storeys, and where heritage should be protected.
7. Norton Folgate is worth fighting for. It is a fine example of the lesser-known areas of historic London which make our capital city the wonderful place it is, but which will destroyed forever if this development goes ahead.
8. Please be sure to include your postal address otherwise your objection will be invalid. Over seven hundred people wrote to Tower Hamlets Council to object to the previous scheme but two hundred letters were discounted through lack of address.
Follow the Campaign at facebook/savenortonfolgate
Follow Spitalfields Trust on twitter @SpitalfieldsT
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An New Scheme For Norton Folgate
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Dan Cruickshank in Norton Folgate
Taking Liberties in Norton Folgate
At Fieldgate St Great Synagogue
There is an overwhelming melancholy at Fieldgate St Great Synagogue. A place of reverence for over a century, it is no longer required now the congregation has departed. It closed for regular services in 2007.
When the synagogue was founded in 1899, Whitechapel was defined by the Jewish community that filled the surrounding streets, yet they dwindled away through the second half of the last century, moving to better housing and better lives in the newly-built suburbs.
After bomb damage in World War II, Fieldgate St Synagogue was rebuilt and reopened in 1959, retaining significant features from the earlier building. There is a lonely grandeur to the place today, worn and dusty now but still with evidence of the attention exercised in its care. Fine gilt texts upon panels around the balcony record benefactors and commemorate loved ones, never to be forgotten. A cotton roller towel still hangs by the sink in the hallway, stale matzos sit in a cupboard upstairs and tablecloths grace abandoned tables, awaiting those who will not return.
Sold last summer to the East London Mosque, which has extended itself upon three sides of the building in recent years, the empty structure sits in limbo awaiting an uncertain future yet, for the meantime, Fieldgate St Great Synagogue harbours the lingering presence of all the worshippers who passed through.
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