A Concert To Save Norton Folgate
History will be made on 26th April when The Spitalfields Trust takes the Mayor of London to the High Court for a Judicial Review of his mishandling of British Land‘s application to destroy Norton Folgate in Spitalfields, when he overturned the decision of Tower Hamlets Council to reject this development. There are four grounds for the review and this hearing will be the first time in Boris Johnson‘s eight year tenure that anyone has succeeded in summoning him to a Judicial Review of his behaviour as Mayor.
To raise a fighting fund, The Spitalfields Trust is staging a benefit concert on Monday 18th April 7:30pm at Shoreditch Church, featuring Suggs of Madness and other guests to be announced …
CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR TICKETS. Those who are unable to attend can click here to donate directly.
Norton Folgate is an historic neighbourhood that has evolved into a complex web of streets, alleyways, courtyards and warehouses which tell the story of our capital. Developers British Land, backed by the City of London, want to destroy Norton Folgate with wholesale demolition, constructing tall office blocks up to 14 stories with large floor plates – all within a designated Conservation Area. Founded in 1977 to fight the destruction of Spitalfields, the Spitalfields Trust has taken on both British Land and the City of London to stop this wanton destruction, and is offering instead to repair the old buildings in a Conservation-led Scheme. Taking on the big boys with bottomless pockets has cost a small building preservation charity hard, but we need to raise £30,000 to pursue this fight to its successful conclusion through the courts. If we do not succeed, a terrible precedent is set for the future protection of all Conservation Areas throughout the country.
Follow the Campaign at facebook/savenortonfolgate
Follow Spitalfields Trust on twitter @SpitalfieldsT
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An Offer to Buy Norton Folgate
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An New Scheme For Norton Folgate
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Dan Cruickshank in Norton Folgate
Taking Liberties in Norton Folgate
Passmore Edwards’ East End Libraries
At this time of library cuts and the occupation of the Carnegie Library in Lambeth, Dean Evans author of Funding The Ladder – The Passmore Edwards Legacy takes a look at the forgotten benefactor who shaped the culture of the East End through his enlightened philanthropy.
“It is a distinguished privilege, lightening the lot of our fellow East End citizens.” wrote John Passmore Edwards in 1892, in response to a request from Canon Barnett for a contribution towards a free library he was building in Whitechapel.
Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta moved to St Jude’s Parish, Whitechapel, in the eighteen seventies when it was an over-crowded area of appalling poverty and poor housing, mostly endured by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The Barnetts set about to improve the conditions of their parishioners with missionary zeal, believing that “the social problem is at root an educational one” and that Free Libraries were the best means of education. Barnet had recently showed Edwards the half-finished library for which there was a shortfall in funding and was surprised to receive such a quick and welcoming response – since included with Edwards’ agreement to help was a cheque for £6,454 to cover the total construction cost and an offer of one thousand books to populate the shelves.
When the Whitechapel Library was formally opened in October 1892, there were already more than two and a half thousand people making use of the reading room on a daily basis and one thousand on Sundays. It had taken Barnett fourteen years to see his dream materialise of the first rate-supported library in the East End. For Passmore Edwards it was the beginning of a relationship with the East End that was to last until the end of his days and result in more than a dozen public buildings, libraries, hospitals, technical institutes, art galleries, boys clubs and a home for foreign sailors, all freely given to help those less fortunate.
John Passmore Edwards had been born in Blackwater, a small mining village near Truro, Cornwall, in 1823. Educated at the local dame school at a cost of tuppence a week, he had developed an ambition to be useful, an ambition that was to stay with him for all of his eighty-eight years. Asquith said that Edwards had done “more than any single Englishman to help the people to equip and educate themselves for civic and social duty.” Edwards simply said that if he could fund the ladder, the poor would climb.
As a young boy, he helped his father both in the family brewery attached to the cottage in which they lived and also in the market garden that was cultivated around the cottage, tending and picking fruit to be sold in the local markets. Saving up the few pennies he earned, he walked the seven miles into Truro to buy a single second-hand book, reading anything and everything he could lay his hands upon. After sending for leaflets on the work of the Anti-Corn Law League, he was persuaded to help deliver these throughout West Cornwall – to the chagrin of the Mayor of Penzance, a magistrate, who threatened him with prison for sedition. But Passmore Edwards’ zeal was not to be deflected, not then, nor at any time over the next seventy years.
After working briefly as a solicitor’s clerk in Truro, he travelled, first to Manchester as representative of the radical newspaper, The Sentinel, and then to London, arriving in Holborn in 1845. There he learnt a trade as a publisher’s clerk, but earned his living through freelance writing and lecturing, and found time to continue his education at the Mechanics Institute, while becoming actively involved in many of the social and political reform groups of the time. He was a member of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, The Political and Financial Reform Association, The Society for the Abolition of Tax on Knowledge, The Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, The Peace Society, and many more.
In 1850, then twenty-seven years old and with fifty pounds in savings, he launched a small publication of his own, The Public Good, obtaining paper and printing on credit and living and working in a single room in Paternoster Row, where he became editor, publisher, advertising clerk, as well as packing and sending off orders. But with a low cover price in order to be affordable to the working classes, neither this nor subsequent publications were profitable and, after a serious illness, he was declared bankrupt. Yet, though legally cleared of his remaining debts, he determined to pay back what he owed and did so a decade later. By hard work and frugal living, he clawed his way to success – obtaining first The Building News, then The English Mechanic magazine and in 1876, the London Echo.
Now a wealthy and influential man, Edwards turned his thoughts to Parliament and served for a short but disappointing spell as Liberal Member for Salisbury, before finding he could more better satisfy his ambitions outside Westminster. From 1890 to his death in 1911, he funded the construction of seventy-one public buildings. Twenty-one were in his home county of Cornwall, but the majority were to serve the inhabitants of London. His philanthropy was unique in that while his work was spread over diverse areas of social improvement – libraries, education, the arts, hospitals, convalescent homes, orphans and the disabled – he maintained a long-term relationship with all the organisations and institutions that he helped.
His gift of the Whitechapel Library in 1892 was followed in 1893 by the Haggerston Branch Library, a Cottage Hospital in Willesdon, a Lecture Hall for the new South London Art Gallery, and a hundred acre farm at Chalfont St Peters as the base for what was to become the National Society for Epilepsy. 1894 saw the opening of a Convalescent Home at Pegwell Bay, the following year a new wing at the West Ham Hospital, a Cottage Hospital at Wood Green, and the creation of a Printers’ Library at St Bride’s – while in 1896, the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, no less than ten opening ceremonies took place.
After laying the foundation stone at the Pitsfield St Library, Shoreditch, he went on to open an extension to the Haggerston Library and after opening the Shepherds Bush Library he walked to Hamersmith Broadway to unveil a drinking fountain, dedicated to the memory of his brother Richard who had been a vestryman there. Remaining a successful newspaper owner and publisher, he was as economical with his time as he was with his money, combining the laying of the foundation stones of the Limehouse Library and the Roman Road Library in a single day, and later similarly opening them on the same day. In 1895, he travelled down to Cornwall to lay foundation stones or open five of his buildings in a single week, only to return to London on the Friday, to open another library.
His wife, Eleanor, was also closely involved with his philanthropic work, helping to raise funds as a member of the Ladies’ Guild of the Charing Cross Hospital and arranging the furnishings for the Falmouth Cottage Hospital and the Perranporth Convalescent Home among others. She organised outings to Epping Forrest for children from the East End. Two hundred at a time would be taken there by train and treated to a tea and organised games, all funded by The Echo.
It was the gift of the Perranporth Convalescent Home that persuaded the Truro City Council to grant Edwards the Honorary Freedom of the Borough, which was followed by the Freedom of the Boroughs of Falmouth and Liskeard. In London he was equally honoured, by the Boroughs of both East and West Ham, yet he refused a Knighthood offered by both Queen Victoria and later, King Edwards VII, preferring, he said, to remain as he was.
Over the years the perceived need for convalescent homes has diminished, hospitals have become larger, orphanages have closed, and many of the Passmore Edwards buildings are no longer used for the original purpose. It was a German bomb that destroyed the St George-in-the-East Library, but the Limehouse Library has been left empty and decaying ever since it shut in 2004. Many others of his buildings have been fortunate to acquire other uses. The Whitechapel Library is now a splendidly restored annexe to the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The Borough Rd Library, the West Ham Museum, and the Camberwell School of Arts are all now used by London universities. The Haggerston Library, Canning Town Boys Club and Sailors Palace at Limehouse, built for the British and Foreign Sailors’ Society, are converted into housing. Of the London hospitals, only the Willesdon and East Ham buildings remain in use and of the London Libraries, only those at Plaistow, Nunhead, Dulwich and Acton remain open. With the current threat to library provision, the future of even these must be uncertain.
In 1850, Edwards campaigned with William Ewart for the Free Libraries Act but the progress with provision of libraries, even in London, was slow mainly due to resistance of the ratepayers – at the time only the more wealthy and better educated – to paying a penny rate to support them. Yet by then Edwards’ belief in the need for libraries was widely evident from his name over so many doors and upon foundation stones across London, and his offer of one thousand books to any new library opening in London.
Bernard Kops, East End poet and playwright, famously wrote of the Whitechapel Library that “the door of the library, was the door into me.” The name over that door was Passmore Edwards.
Plashet Library
Haggerston Library
Bow Library
Limehouse Library
Stratford Museum
Sailors’ Palace, East India Dock Rd
Plaistow Library
Hoxton Library
John Passmore Edwards (1823-1911)
FUNDING THE LADDER – The Passmore Edwards Legacy by Dean Evans can be ordered direct from the publisher Francis Boutle and copies are on sale in bookshops including Brick Lane Bookshop, Broadway Books, Newham Bookshop, Stoke Newington Bookshop and London Review Bookshop.
Malcolm Tremain’s Spitalfields, Then & Now
Yesterday I took a walk with my camera in the footsteps of Malcolm Tremain to visit the locations of his photographs from the early eighties and discover what changes time has wrought …
Passage from Allen Gardens to Brick Lane
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
Steps of Brick Lane Mosque
In Puma Court
Corner of Wilkes St & Princelet St
In Wilkes St
Jewish Soup Kitchen in Brune St
Outside the former night shelter in Crispin St, now student housing for LSE
In Crispin St
In Bell Lane
In Parliament Court
In Artillery Passage
In Artillery Passage
In Middlesex St
In Bishopsgate
In Wentworth St
In Fort St
In Allen Gardens
At Pedley St Bridge
Black & white photographs copyright © Malcolm Tremain
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Andrew Scott’s East End, Then & Now
Dan Cruickshank’s Spitalfields, Then & Now
Val Perrin’s Brick Lane, Then & Now
Malcolm Tremain’s City & East End
Complementing Malcolm Tremain’s photography of Spitalfields in the early eighties, here are his pictures of the City of London and other locations around the East End, published for the first time
George the newspaper seller at Tower Hill
Inside the cafeteria at Old Broad St Station
Facade of Old Broad St during demolition
On Old Broad St Station
In Sun St Alley
In Cloth Fair
In Cloth Fair
Supports from World War II standing in an alley off Cloth Fair
Alley near Copthall Avenue
Nat West Tower seen from Bishopsgate
Castle Snack Bar, City of London, at Christmas
Kossoff Bakery at the rear of Liverpool St Station
Coleman St Ward School
In Bishopsgate
Looking through an alley from Durward St to Whitechapel Market
Looking through from Whitechapel Market to Durward St
In Durward St, Whitechapel
In Durward St, Whitechapel
Fordham St, Whitechapel
Off Mile End Rd
Off Mile End Rd
Off Mile End Rd
Off Mile End Rd
Regent’s Canal, Bow
Regent’s Canal, off Mile End Rd
Regent’s Canal, Ben Jonson Rd
Regent’s Canal, Bow
Photographs copyright © Malcolm Tremain
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A Little Journey With Viscountess Boudica
Upon the annual celebration of misrule, I present this portrait of Viscountess Boudica by Henjo TV
[vimeo 117306193 nolink]
Be sure to follow Viscountess Boudica’s blog There’s More To Life Than Heaven & Earth
Take a look at
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween
Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas
Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day
Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter
and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats
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
