Objecting To The Goodsyard Proposals
Today I publish the complete text of The East End Preservation Society‘s formal objection letter to the Bishopsgate Goodsyard Proposals as sent to the Planning Officers at Hackney & Tower Hamlets Councils this week. There is still time to make your own voice heard and you can read the Society’s guide to How to Object Effectively by clicking here.
Bishopsgate Goodsyard development proposals – Applications PA/14/02011 & PA/14/02096 (Tower Hamlets) 2014/2425 & 2014/2427 (Hackney)
We wish to register our strong objection to these applications for the proposed redevelopment of the Bishopsgate Goodsyard site.
Difficulty in assessing applications
We would like at this point to state that this application has proved extremely hard to access and interpret, despite the commitment made by the applicant in its statement of community involvement. The Design and Access Statement alone is in three volumes and split into over one hundred and eighty separate downloadable documents on Tower Hamlets’ planning website. The document has no executive summary, making an already extremely complicated application even harder to penetrate. With this in mind we appreciate that your Council is accepting responses to these applications beyond the statutory consultation period of twenty-one days.
Significance and planning history
The Bishopsgate Goodsyard is the site of a major Victorian London terminus, originally the main passenger station for the lines to Norwich and Yarmouth. Its construction began in 1839 under John Braithwaite. It was therefore part of the early, pioneering railway age in Britain. The original building – an elegant Italianate design – was redeveloped as a goods station in 1880-81 following the opening of Liverpool Street station in 1875. This new building had three storeys, a street-level basement, the goods station above that and a warehouse at the top.
These buildings were extensively damaged by fire in 1964. However, the surviving structures were nevertheless later recognised by English Heritage as of great importance – both on account of the remains of the two-level goods station but also of the Braithwaite Viaduct (listed in 2002) built as part of the original development in the eighteen-thirties. Despite this recognition and a hard-fought conservation campaign, demolition of the unlisted structures was granted in 2003 – and the site was substantially cleared. Sir Neil Cossons, Chairman of English Heritage in 2002, commented at the time (with extraordinary prescience) ‘Bishopsgate Goodsyard is one of London’s forgotten treasures. To reduce it to a pile of rubble with no clear idea of what would replace it would be tragic, generating years of uncertainty and blight’.
This recent history makes the surviving historic structures within Bishopsgate Goodsyard exceptionally important both to the history and character of the area and also in the wider context of Britain’s railway heritage.
The site has been identified as the location for tall buildings in the Mayor of London’s draft City Fringe Opportunity Area Planning Framework (see below). Unhelpfully, the Interim Planning Guidance (IPG) does not give any actual indication of what height might be acceptable but designates the western end of the site, west of Braithwaite Street, as the location for tall buildings, with a graduation in height across the site to the east where ‘street’ scale buildings that relate to the scale of Brick Lane should be located.
Furthermore, new guidance issued by the Mayor of London (see ‘Policy’ section below) makes it clear that new development in any part of London should take into account the character and history of the surrounding area.
SUMMARY OF OBJECTIONS
This objection is based on a number of grounds. We are concerned a) about the level of demolition of existing structures b) about the height, massing and design of the proposed new buildings and c) of the failure to deliver affordable housing on the site.
1. Substantial harm to designated and undesignated heritage assets
We consider that the new development would cause substantial harm to the following designated heritage assets:
– the listed entrance and forecourt walls of the Goodsyard,
– the setting of the Grade II-listed Braithwaite viaduct,
– the setting of the five surrounding conservation areas (the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area, South Shoreditch Conservation Area, Boundary Estate Conservation Are, Redchurch Street Conservation Area and the Elder Street Conservation Area) and the eighty-two listed buildings that surround the site.
Substantial harm will also be caused to some of the undesignated heritage assets on the site including a number of nineteenth-century railway arches which survived demolition in 2003 and which are to be demolished under this scheme. The unlisted structures are arguably curtilage-listed – the appropriate tests for demolition should therefore be applied (NPPF 133). 66-68 Sclater Street, undesignated assets within the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area are also proposed for demolition. This represents callous destruction of the historic environment and would result in the loss of an important piece of streetscape, which the conservation area designation is intended to protect.
2. General impact on the area
This is an exceptionally sensitive urban setting. As well as the designated and undesignated heritage assets within the Goodsyard itself there are five conservation areas which extend almost to the boundaries of the site (see above). These conservation areas contain some of the most outstanding survivals of historic townscape in London. It is inevitable that new development on the Goodsyard site will have an impact on these surrounding areas.
Owing to a failure by the owners to adequately maintain the historic buildings on the site, the current state of the structures is poor (the two listed structures on site are on English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk Register). This has helped create an air of neglect which has a detrimental affect on the wider area. There is clearly an opportunity here for a new development which regenerates the urban fabric in a way that draws its energy from the character of the surrounding conservation areas – and learns from their success.
We accept that the site was identified as a potential location for tall buildings in the Mayor’s draft City Fringe Opportunity Area Planning Framework and that the Interim Planning Guidance (Hackney and Tower Hamlet’s Councils, 2010) stipulated that the western extremity of the site should be the location for tall buildings. However, a tall building is generally defined as one that is significantly taller than its surroundings. This area is characterised by buildings which are generally no more than 6 storeys but with some warehouses and commercial structures which rise to 8. The proposed towers on site range from 15 to 46 storeys making them grossly out of scale with their immediate surroundings and representing an incursion of the City of London’s commercial district into this vulnerable and fragile ‘fringe’ area.
The applicant’s Heritage Statement inevitably plays down the impact of the effect of the height of the new development on the conservation areas, with statements like ‘Fournier Street and associated streets will be unaffected for example.’ It’s very hard to believe that Wilkes Street and Brick Lane which both adjoin Fournier Street will be unaffected since both have direct views to the site and, indeed, the CGIs of the proposals from the surrounding streets tells a very different story – highlighting the overwhelming impact of the proposed towers.
Towers F and G (of 46 and 42 stories) are the tallest and have the greatest and most far-reaching impact. They are both within a few hundred metres of the Elder Street Conservation Area which is made up predominantly of buildings of 4 and 5 stories including many important early eighteenth-century houses.
One of the major associated effects of the height of the proposed development is the literal overshadowing of the surrounding areas. The applicant’s Daylight Assessment concludes that 43% of the buildings surveyed will have major reductions of sunlight. Unsurprisingly, many of these buildings are in the conservation areas to the north of the site, including buildings along Sclater Street, Redchurch Street and Old Nichol Street. This result speaks for itself in terms of the profoundly negative effect of the proposed tall buildings on the surrounding area.
The design of those buildings which are covered by the full planning applications is very disappointing, failing to relate in any way to the character of the surrounding area. It is admittedly difficult to articulate and detail a 46 storey tower so that it responds appropriately to its historic setting. but even the lower blocks on Plots D and E appear bland and bulky. The very nature of very tall buildings means they have an uncomfortable relationship with the street, requiring larger footprints at the lower levels and tall podiums to support the upper levels.
PROPOSALS
A. The Development
As discussed above, the proposals include a series of towers. At the south-west corner are the tallest at 46 and 42 storeys (with plant above that, increasing the height further). In the north-west corner is a large block (in plots A and B) which ranges in height between 10 and 12 storeys and would run along much of the length the site where it meets Bethnal Green Road, creating an overbearing presence on this northern boundary.
In the middle of the site are two further towers of 34 and 30 storeys on a podium of lower blocks. To the eastern end of the site are a series of buildings ranging from 24 down to 9 stories with lower building around the perimeter of the site.
B. Designated and Undesignated assets
The site includes a number of designated and undesignated heritage assets. The listed Braithwaite Viaduct is due to be repaired and converted to a shopping arcade, a use it is well suited to. The ‘shell’ of the grade II forecourt walls and gateway will also be repaired. We disagree with the assessment in the Heritage Statement that concludes that the boundary walls are not listed with the gate and forecourt walls – they are all of the same date and form the same structure.
The walls are also an important part of the setting of the Goodsyard and the listed structures there. The original Goodsyard needed to be a secure area – and the surviving walls are therefore integral to its history. The walls also form part of the setting of the surrounding conservation areas – they define the historic relationship of the Goodsyard to its residential and commercial surroundings. The stretch along Commercial Street is particularly handsome and well preserved despite recent neglect. The permeability of this boundary could be increased by creating openings without such extensive demolition.
The applicant attempts to mitigate the demolition of these walls by the restoration of the listed Oriel Gateway, a Building at Risk. This is disingenuous – the Oriel Gateway is a Building at Risk largely because the current owners have not maintained it and only the shell is proposed to be repaired as part of these applications. This justification for demolishing the surrounding walls should therefore not be taken into account.
Vaults V1 and V2 which are behind the wall running along Commercial St (at a lower level) are curtilage to the gateway and forecourt walls and are due for demolition, along with vaults V3 to V11 and G9 to V1 which are unlisted but Victorian vaults all the same. These are on Plots F and G which is the proposed location for the 46 and 42 storey towers. The justification given for the demolition is the need to increase permeability to the site and to create wider public benefit (such as improved public realm and the provision of some public open space). Preserving and reusing these attractive historic structures (perhaps building a few storeys above them) would in our view result in a far more exciting, contextual and engaging scheme.
The former Mission Room and Weavers’ Cottages are within the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area. As the applicant states, the buildings are interesting examples of their type with the former Mission Hall, a rare survival highlighting the role of social welfare in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, despite the proposals to repair these interesting survivals they will be cast into almost permanent shadow by the new blocks to south of them, ruining their setting.
We support the Victorian Society’s objection to the demolition of 66-68 Sclater Street. These are handsome nineteenth-century buildings which the conservation area designation should protect.
C. Lack of Affordable Housing
Hackney and Tower Hamlets are two of the London’s most densely populated boroughs with combined housing waiting lists of over 40,000 people. Remarkably, the applicant gives no commitment to affordable housing within this scheme (instead stating 10% affordable housing as an aim). This is in clear conflict with local planning guidance (see ‘Policy’ section below) and has already been criticised by the Mayor of London in his initial assessment.
POLICY
A. The Interim Planning Guidance
The purpose of the Interim Planning Guidance (IPG), published in 2010 by Hackney and Tower Hamlets Councils, was to ensure that the new development on the site achieved a number of basic principles. The proposals fail to achieve these basic design principles regarding character and height.
The IPG states one of its principal aims is:
“to ensure new development on the site integrates with the surrounding area taking into account local character”
The application comprehensively fails to achieve this. The overwhelming scale of the proposed buildings and their complete disregard for the architectural character and materials used in the surrounding areas means the development will loom over the neighbourhood and utterly dilute its distinctive character.
The applicant even states that:
“It will be a new place with its own distinct scale, identity and character; it will not attempt to become a seamless part of the existing neighbourhood.”[Design and Access Statement, Volume 1]
The IPG also directed:
“In line with current planning policies a minimum of 35% affordable housing (calculated by habitable room) should be provided on site.”
However, the developers offer no commitment to providing a specific percentage of affordable housing. They state only that they will aim to provide 10% affordable housing on the site. This 20% less than the required 35% by Tower Hamlets and Hackney Councils for new development.
B. Height
The IPG states that the west end of the site (west of Braithwaite Street) should be the location for any tall buildings. Also, that in accordance with the Mayor’s advice development should be
“acceptable in terms of design and impact on their surroundings.”
The IPG’s principle of graduated heights across the site is adhered to in the proposals but the tall buildings are not restricted to the area west of Braithwaite Street. Buildings of 34, 30, 20, 17 and 15 stories in this area are undoubtedly also tall buildings in that they are significantly higher than the majority of the structures in the local area. Buildings of these heights are proposed for the middle and east of the site, all eastward of Braithwaite Street.
The proposals therefore do not conform with the Guidance set out in the Interim Planning Guidance on building heights.
c. The London Plan
A Supplementary Planning Guidance document on Character and Context was published in June 2014 under the London Plan. Policy 7.4 entitled ‘Local Character’ which is particularly relevant to this application states:
“Development should have regard to the form, function, and structure of an area, place or street and the scale, mass and orientation of surrounding buildings. It should improve an area’s visual or physical connection with natural features. In areas of poor or ill-defined character, development should build on the positive elements that can contribute to establishing an enhanced character for the future function of the area.”
And
“Buildings, streets and open spaces should provide a high quality design response that:
a. has regard to the pattern and grain of the existing spaces and streets in orientation, scale, proportion and mass
c. is human in scale, ensuring buildings create a positive relationship with street level activity and people feel comfortable with their surroundings;
d. allows existing buildings and structures that make a positive contribution to the character of a place to influence the future character of the area;
e. is informed by the surrounding historic environment.”
The applications for redeveloping the Bishopsgate Goodsyard fail to take account of this guidance through an apparent disregard of the character of the surrounding area.
CONCLUSION
The Goodsyard should be seen as an opportunity to reunite the surrounding areas with an exemplary development that is sensitive and contextual – worthy of the area that surrounds it. What is proposed will effectively undermine the fabric of this characterful and creative area and blight the surrounding conservation areas. The popularity and interest of Spitalfields and Shoreditch which is now so commercially attractive to property developers depends upon the flexible historic fabric and intimate urban spaces that lend themselves to reinvention – something the IPG attempts to capture. The subtle approach needed is totally absent in this vast, intrusive and alien development.
Yours sincerely,

THE EAST END PRESERVATION SOCIETY
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How To Write A Blog That People Will Want To Read
If readers are inspired to seek a new venture in 2015, they are very welcome to join my course HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th of February in Spitalfields. Here are a few examples written by participants from previous courses.
RESERVATION & HILLYBILLY NIPPERS
This picture was taken in 1905 and is of students at Tunassassa Indian School. This was a Quaker-run boarding school for Indians. My grandmother is the girl above the left shoulder of the matron in white. My grandmother married another student from the school and had three children with him. After he died, she married my grandfather. He had gone to Thomas Indian School. They had two children, my uncle and my mom. One of the many things my grandmother learned in school was how to quilt, and she is the reason that I became a professional quilter.
This is my mom – in the braids – when she attended the local school, before she went away to college where she met my father. They were married for forty-three years until his death. She had seven children, me and my brothers. She died after a long illness two years ago. She attended a one room school house, then went to high school with white students. She hated to have to wear braids, and when she went to high school she cut her hair and never wore it long again.
Here’s a picture from about 1934 – seated is my dad and standing next to him is his half-brother.
There was this was big family secret I only found out years after he died, that they were half-brothers. My great uncle revealed the story after I said my grandmother had told me that my grandfather was “the handsomest man” that she ever laid eyes on. This was a puzzler as no-one would describe my grandfather like that.
So my great uncle told me the story of the mystery man who worked with my great uncle, he met my grandmother, they got married (?) and he left her before my dad was born. Later my grandfather had moved to the city and lived next door to my grandmother. When they married he made her a deal, she would never speak of my dad’s father and would have no contact with his family. She kept the deal, except for that stray comment.
My dad lived with his grandparents when he was little and was a native Russian speaker. He was a boxer, an artist and a bum. He died in 1992.
BUG WOMAN’S WEDNESDAY WEED
Every Wednesday, I find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of my inquiry.
The Totteridge Yew (Taxus baccata)
I always feel a little melancholy at New Year. Maybe it is because I am an introvert and I no longer drink alcohol, which makes me uneasy in situations of forced jollity and large crowds? Or maybe it is because January feels more like a time for staying in bed – preferably with an excellent novel and a bowl of syrup pudding – than a time for taking up jogging and eating kale?
So, to give myself some perspective, I went to see the oldest living thing in London with my long-suffering husband, John. This magnificent Yew tree lives in St Andrew’s churchyard in Totteridge, a twenty-minute bus ride from East Finchley. It has seen at least two thousand New Year’s days come and go, and is still full of fresh growth and vigor. To ensure its health, a team from Kew Gardens visited thirty years ago and did a little judicious pruning and shoring up of the centre of the plant, which invariably becomes hollow as the plant ages.
Yew is often found in churchyards. In this, as in many other examples, the tree long predates the church even though there has been some kind of ecclesiastical building here since around 1250. It is likely that the church was built on a site that was already sacred and the tree, then a stripling of just over a thousand years old, was already a place for rituals and meetings. In 1722, a baby was found under the tree, named ‘Henry Totteridge’ and made a ward of the parish.
Part of the reason for the longevity of Yew is that it is very slow-growing and some scientists believe it can reach ages of four to five thousand years – the Totteridge Yew is one of only ten trees in the country that date from before the tenth century. The oldest wooden artifact in Europe, a 450,000 year-old spearhead found in Clacton-on-Sea, is made of Yew. All parts of the plant are poisonous, except the red flesh on the berry, and chief of the Celtic tribe the Eburones (the ancient word for Yew was Eburos) killed himself by ingesting a toxin from it rather than submitting to the Romans.
Yew is known to be poisonous to horses and, in hot weather, the foliage produces a gas which is said to cause hallucinations. But it can also be used to produce a drug for use in breast cancer and so, for a while, pharmaceutical companies were looking for Yew forests to destroy. However, what is new to science is often already known by native peoples and Yew has long been used by Himalayans as a treatment for breast and ovarian cancer.
Yet this is not the first time Yew has been subjected to over-harvesting. It is perfect for the making of longbows and in the fifteenth century compulsory longbow practice for all adult males was introduced, depleting these slow-growing trees so profoundly that Richard III introduced a ‘tax’, insisting that every ship bringing goods to England had to include ten bowstaves for every ton of goods. During the sixteenth century, the supply of Yew dwindled until there was none left in Bavaria or Austria and the custom of planting Yews in churchyards to ensure future demand may have begun at this time.
Spending time outdoors soothes my soul, especially when I am in the company of a tree of such remarkable character as the Totteridge Yew. It was already a thousand years old when the Normans came with their stone masonry and castle-building. How many babies have been borne past it in their mother’s arms for Christening? How many young couples have passed under its branches on their wedding day? How many sombre coffins have been carried under the lych-gate to the freshly-dug graves that surround it? Once people came up to the church on foot or in horse-drawn carts, where now they swoosh past in cars. If only it could tell me what it has seen.
As I go, I rest my hand for a moment on that smooth, rose-pink bark, as I suspect so many others have done before me. I feel a sense of calm descend, as if I have been holding my breath for a week and finally let it out.
PEOPLE I MEET – DAVID CANTOR
http://davidcantor.weebly.com/blog
David was a promising young boxer with aspirations to turn professional until, leaving a disco one night in Peckham, someone pointed a loaded shotgun at his head. David lost an eye and suffered a head full of pellets. It took a full year and a great deal of personal courage just to learn to walk and talk again .Today, David is an active campaigner against the carrying and use of guns by urban gangs, often finding himself at odds with the civic authorities. David argues, with a great deal of authority, that he is uniquely qualified to talk about the dangers of gun crime. Despite this, he tells me that he has been barred from entering City Hall and discussing the issues by Boris Johnson’s office. Different people, same objective, unable to agree on a common approach. What needs to happen, David asserts, is that ‘young stars’ take greater heed from someone who talks their language and fully understands the peer and other pressures that lead to the carrying of guns. Whatever the difficulties, David continues his campaign in his own personal and distinctive style. That he is a survivor not a victim is undeniable – his resilience and determination to ensure that what happened to him does not happen to others is a tribute to this remarkable man.
PAPER BLOGGING
Roxbury Puddingstone
We have a type of rock in my neighbourhood that is all our own, geologically found only in a corner of Boston. A messy mix of ‘non-glacial subaqueous mass flow’ or ‘leftovers’ it is not elegant but I love it because it is ours – and I look for it and notice it constantly.
Everywhere I go here, I ask if people know about our Roxbury Puddingstone. Very often they do not. One mom exclaimed, “Oh! That’s why a Massachusetts monument I saw in Washington looks like that! I thought they were being cheap!” Yes, our State Rock looks like poured concrete full of builder’s detritus.
Back in the day, Boston proper was a small peninsula jutting into the harbor. The large lump inland was Roxbury and, this huge region south of the peninsula, is where this conglomerate stone is found. It is also known as the Church Stone, since at least thirty-five nineteenth century Boston churches were built from Roxbury Puddingstone.
The Museum of Science in Boston boasts a marvellous Rock Walk, a Geological Hall of Fame. There you will find samples from such superstars as The Rock of Gibraltar and the Giant’s Causeway – such highs and lows as the peak of Denali and the depths of Death Valley, even a petrified tree from Arizona. As the local favorite, dear old Puddingstone gets a look in too, humble and shy amid such greats.
Perhaps because it is so ugly, the Museum prepared the specimen by cutting off a slice and polishing the cut surface to a beautiful, unnatural shine. It really brings out the unique qualities of the individual rocks in the mix. Actually it is lovely. “But look, kids!” I say to my children, “Look at the ugly side. That’s what it really looks like. Our Puddingstone.”
One Geologist states, “The Roxbury is to geologists what the dropped ‘R’ is to linguists, a sign that you are in Boston, for the Puddingstone only occurs in and around the Hub. And like this linguistic trait, no one knows exactly where these rocks originated.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes in his eighteen-thirties poem, The Dorchester Giant, imagined a fanciful origin for the stone and used to wax lyrical about the joys of it. “It is interesting to see how the same subject presented itself to the poet in different moods,” ponders an editor at Eldritch Press. “There is a passage in ‘The Professer at the Breakfast-Table’ which begins, ‘I wonder whether the boys who live in Roxbury and Dorchester are ever moved to tears or filled with silent awe as they look upon the rocks and fragments of ‘Puddingstone’ abounding in those localities.’ Then follows a half page of eloquent speculation on the Puddingstone.”
Creative Edwardian house builders perched mansions on precipices of the stuff rather than battle reality. Since driving kids past these mansions occupies far more of my time than writing this blog, I look and notice the Puddingstone and enjoy the journey far more. I scan sideways for the great, thrusting outcrops of the gray, bulbous mess, and smile lovingly at the knowledge that Oliver Wendell Holmes was just as filled with wonder.
HERNE HILL PIANO – RANDOM ENCOUNTERS IN A RAILWAY WALKWAY
Maureen Ni Fiann wrote a blog about the Herne Hill People’s Piano and now she has made this film
CHIRPS FROM AROUND THE WORLD – EITHNE NIGHTINGALE
https://eithnenightingale.wordpress.com/
The Muslim Museum Of Australia
I take the number 86 tram to the end of the line and then walk through a creek for about forty minutes. I sigh with relief when I see a mosque, enter and ask the warder, “Can you direct me to the Islamic Museum of Australia?” The warder looks blank. He knows nothing about any museum so I hail a taxi. I fall lucky. The cab driver is a Lebanese Muslim who has taken his children to this new museum that recently opened in February 2014. “It’s a Turkish mosque,” he says as if that explains the ignorance of the warder.
I enter into a hall way filled with light filtered through a frieze of stars. I pass quickly through the sections on Islamic way of life although stop to read an illuminating interpretation of ‘jihad’ and to listen to young enlightened Muslim women. In the next gallery, I stop to read about the Islamic take on the Dark Ages. It is the Golden Age of Islamic science, engineering, literature, art, architecture and navigation communicated through an up-beat, child-friendly film. The text too is engaging. I learn about a Muslim who opened vapour baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to King George IV and William IV.
Passing through the contemporary art gallery, I am stopped in my tracks by an upright surfing board decorated with Islamic design – even more startling than the Aboriginal kippah. It is the history of Muslims in Australia that captures me.
As early as the seventeenth century, Muslim fisherman came from Indonesia to Australia’s shores. They sailed across the ocean, fifty boats at a time, to fish for sea slugs, considered a delicacy by the Chinese. That is until their visits were banned in 1907. Then came the camel-handlers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Two thousand came between 1870 and 1920 to drive twenty thousand camels. The animals were ideal for exploring into the interior, and transporting material for constructing roads. Unable to bring over their wives and children the handlers left in the 1940s when camels were no longer needed. That is except for those who had married Indigenous or European women.
On the way back to the city, I pick up a newspaper and read about the siege in Sydney – a radical Muslim or a deranged individual? It was a timely reminder of the importance of such a museum.
HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ, 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields, 7th & 8th February
Spend a weekend in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Spitalfields and learn how to write a blog with The Gentle Author.
This course will examine the essential questions which need to be addressed if you wish to write a blog that people will want to read.
“Like those writers in fourteenth century Florence who discovered the sonnet but did not quite know what to do with it, we are presented with the new literary medium of the blog – which has quickly become omnipresent, with many millions writing online. For my own part, I respect this nascent literary form by seeking to explore its own unique qualities and potential.” – The Gentle Author
COURSE STRUCTURE
1. How to find a voice – When you write, who are you writing to and what is your relationship with the reader?
2. How to find a subject – Why is it necessary to write and what do you have to tell?
3. How to find the form – What is the ideal manifestation of your material and how can a good structure give you momentum?
4. The relationship of pictures and words – Which comes first, the pictures or the words? Creating a dynamic relationship between your text and images.
5. How to write a pen portrait – Drawing on The Gentle Author’s experience, different strategies in transforming a conversation into an effective written evocation of a personality.
6. What a blog can do – A consideration of how telling stories on the internet can affect the temporal world.
SALIENT DETAILS
The course will be held at 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields on 7th & 8th February from 10am -5pm on Saturday and 11am-5pm on Sunday. Lunch catered by Leila’s Cafe and tea, coffee and cakes by the Townhouse.
Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book a place on the course.
Doors Of Spitalfields
As we enter the threshold and commence the New Year, I present you with the doors of Spitalfields. How many do you recognise and how many will you walk through in 2015?
Underwood Rd
Pedley St
Brick Lane
Fournier St
Commercial St
Deal St
Brick Lane
Fournier St
Princelet St
Fournier St
Brick Lane
Fournier St
Toynbee St
Elder St
Hanbury St
Fournier St
Blossom St
Elder St
Brick Lane
Fournier St
Woodseer St
Fournier St
Hanbury St
Fournier St
Brushfield St
Toynbee St
Princelet St
Wentworth St
Leyden St
Sandys Row
Artillery Lane
Crispin St
Elder St
Spital St
Elder St
Quaker St
Hanbury St
Folgate St
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In Search Of Val Perrin’s Brick Lane
In recent days, the weather in London has been bright but yesterday offered a suitably occluded sky to set out with my camera in search of Val Perrin’s Brick Lane and below you can see my photographs beneath Val’s shots from 1972, revealing forty years of change in Spitalfields.
Brick Lane 1972
Brick Lane 2015
Cheshire St 1972
Cheshire St 2015
Cheshire St 1972
Cheshire St 2015
Brick Lane 1972
Brick Lane 2015
Cheshire St 1972
Cheshire St 2015
Brick Lane 1972
Brick Lane 2015
St Matthew’s Row & The Carpenters’ Arms 1972
St Matthew’s Row & The Carpenters’ Arms 2015
St Matthew’s Row 1972
St Matthew’s Row 2015
Sclater St 1972
Sclater St 2015
Corbett Place from Hanbury St 1972
Corbett Place from Hanbury St 2015
Bacon St 1972
Bacon St 2015
Code St & Shoreditch Station 1972
Code St & Shoreditch Station 2015
Pedley St Bridge 1972
Pedley St Bridge 2015
1972 Photographs copyright © Val Perrin
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Part 3. The Life Of Peter Stanley Brown
Following Part 1. A Discovery At Christmas and Part 2. Christmas On The Moor, this is the concluding piece in a series of three short memoirs, revealing the contents of a locked box that my father carried his whole life and telling the story it contained, which I discovered after his death.
Peter & Gwladys
This is the only photograph of my grandmother, Gwladys Brown, and my father, Peter, yet even in this image – taken in Exeter in 1924 – she appears to be fading like a ghost, just as she vanished from his life and from the world after he had been adopted. I only learnt of her existence in 2001 when I opened a locked box after my father died and discovered a dozen of her letters which revealed she was a single mother who had been forced to give him up as a baby.
These letters comprise Gwladys’ account of the unravelling of her life – my father’s adoption and her confinement in a tuberculosis sanatorium on Dartmoor for ten months. Only one subsequent letter exists, written on the day she was discharged to a nursing home, suggesting that the treatment at the sanatorium was ineffective and, in the absence of any further correspondence or information, I can only conclude that she died there.
Looking back over the correspondence, I am puzzled at how Gwladys found herself alone and without any family or relatives in the small cathedral city of Exeter. Just as the father of her child was unidentified, she seemed to have sprung from nowhere. How fortunate she was to have the support of my adoptive grandmother, Edith, an entrepreneurial middle-aged woman who ran a fish and chip shop and rented out her yard for bicycle storage to the crowds visiting the local football ground. With her husband, a newspaper seller and rent collector, they adopted my father and – perhaps as an attempt to put the tragedy behind them – moved from a terrace in the city centre to a new house in a small estate along the river, where my father grew up.
Accompanying the letters in the box was Peter’s birth certificate with the official truth spelled out, confirming Gwladys Brown as his mother and without any name listed for his father. Peter was too young to understand what happened to him when he was given up and it seems unlikely he had any memory of his mother. He used to tell me about the poor children with no shoes that he saw in the street when he was a child. It was a memory that haunted him and I think he was relieved that he had been spared.
The couple who adopted my father had a daughter of their own and my father used to take me to visit her on Sunday mornings when I was small child but, once I started preparatory school, these visits ceased and I never saw her again. I wonder if this was a deliberate separation between his old life and his new on his part. From the moment I was born, my name was put down for a private school and throughout my childhood my parents struggled to find the fees even at the reduced rate we paid, thanks to a means test that my father tolerated in silent humiliation. I realise now that my father worked his whole life to become middle-class and, though as an adolescent I found it embarrassing, I have come to appreciate the virtue in possessing the facility to take control of your life rather than existing at the mercy of circumstances, as my grandmother had done.
It was a matter of great shame to my father that, at eleven years old, he went to work in a foundry, yet he redressed this degradation through his prowess on the football pitch and whenever I walked through the city with him he was always greeted by fellow players who had become his lifelong friends. It was at the peak of his sporting success that he met my mother, an educated woman from a classy background. Her liberal mind and his social aspiration bound them together, yet also rendered them baffling to each other.
The achievement of my university education fulfilled both their ambitions, even if my father was disturbed to witness the mental exertion of academic study close up. “You can only do your best,” he reassured me once, on discovering me in a delirious state of exhaustion, “I only want you to be able to do what you please in life.” I realise that much of who I am today came from the direction I was given by my father in reaction to that crisis of 1923. But, in his final years, he told me several times he was satisfied with his own life and its outcome, and I believe Gwladys would have been gratified to learn what became of her child.
I often wonder when my father first read his mother’s letters and I think he made the box to contain them himself when he was a young man, as part of the process of fashioning his own world. I believe he chose to preserve the letters and keep them safe his whole life as a tender remembrance of her. I have also kept all the letters and cards that my parents ever wrote to me and, now that both are dead, I cannot part with any of their missives.
I understand why my father needed to keep his story secret and I deliberated whether to tell my mother, until I realised that if my father had wished to tell her then he had already done so. In the years prior to his death, she had suffered bouts of mental illness and his loss accelerated her confusion, so the question of whether to reveal the contents of the locked box quickly grew irrelevant.
It was a lonely responsibility Peter carried but I believe the all-consuming drama of life took him away from sadness and grief. In a sense, he could ‘forget’ about the contents of his box, even if he could never destroy it. I like to think he kept it for me to find after he had gone.
My dearest Mrs -, You will be surprise to hear that I am at Ivy Banks. I came down today. I am here for a couple of months. The Dr at Hawkmoor thinks I have been there too long, ten months this week, & another change will do me good. How are you getting on? Sorry to have kept you so long for a letter but have been so poorly again, have been in bed three weeks & still in bed. I came all the way by car with a nurse. How dear I would love to see you come and see me. Come down, I expect you know the visiting hours, 2 till 5 o’clock in the afternoon, I would love to see you. Being so far away at Hawkmoor I had no chance of seeing anybody. Of course dear, you know I have never forgotten you & I never should. In fact I thought of you such a lot while I was at Hawkmoor. Excuse short letter but in haste for post. Would love to see any of you. Pop in, it do cheer one up. Hope all are well. All my dearest love to you all, Gwladys xxxx Peter love xxx
Peter Brown
The couple who adopted Peter
Peter’s first bicycle
Peter as a boy
Peter in 1990
Gwladys Brown
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Charles Goss’ Vanishing London
33 Lime St
A man gazed from the second floor window of 33 Lime St in the City of London on February 10th 1911 at an unknown photographer on the pavement below. He did not know the skinny man with the camera and wispy moustache was Charles Goss, archivist at the Bishopsgate Institute, who made it part of his work to record the transient city which surrounded him.
Around fifty albumen silver prints exist in the archive – from which these pictures are selected and published for the first time today – each annotated in Goss’ meticulous handwriting upon the reverse and most including the phrase “now demolished.” Two words that resonate through time like the tolling of a knell.
It was Charles Goss who laid the foundation of the London collection at the Institute, spending his days searching street markets, bookshops and sale rooms to acquire documentation of all kinds – from Cries of London prints to chapbooks, from street maps to tavern tokens – each manifesting different aspects of the history of the great city.
Such was his passion that more than once he was reprimanded by the governors for exceeding his acquisition budget and, such was his generosity, he gathered a private collection in parallel to the one at the library and bequeathed it to the Institute on his death. Collecting the city became Goss’ life and his modest script is to be discovered everywhere in the archive he created, just as his guiding intelligence is apparent in the selection of material that he chose to collect.
It is a logical progression from collecting documents to taking photographs as a means to record aspects of the changing world and maybe Goss was inspired by the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London in the eighteen-eighties, who set out to photograph historic buildings that were soon to be destroyed. Yet Goss’ choice of subject is intriguing, including as many shabby alleys and old yards as major thoroughfares with overtly significant edifices – and almost everything he photographed is gone now.
It is a curious side-effect of becoming immersed in the study of the past that the present day itself grows more transient and ephemeral once set against the perspective of history. In Goss’ mind, he was never merely taking photographs, he was capturing images as fleeting as ghosts, of subjects that were about to vanish from the world. The people in his pictures are not party to his internal drama yet their presence is even more fleeting than the buildings he was recording – like that unknown man gazing from that second floor window in Lime St on 10th February 1911.
To judge what of the present day might be of interest or importance to our successors is a subject of perennial fascination, and these subtle and melancholic photographs illustrate Charles Goss’ answer to that question.
14 Cullum St, 10th February 1910
3, 4 & 5 Fenchurch Buildings, Aldgate, 28th October 1911
71-75 Gracechurch St, 1910
Botolph’s Alley showing 7 Love Lane, 16th December 1911
6 Catherine Court looking east, 8th October 1911
Bury St looking east, 3rd July 1911
Corporation Chambers, Church Passage, Cripplegate, 31st January 1911 – now demolished
Fresh Wharf. Lower Thames St, 28th January 1912
Gravel Lane, looking south-west, 11th October 1910
1 Muscovy Court, 5th June 1911
3 New London St, 28th January 1912
4 Devonshire Sq
52 Gresham St, 17th September 1911
9-11 Honey Lane Market, Cheapside, 16th October 1910
Crutched Friars looking east from 37, 11th February 1911
Crutched Friars looking east, 28th October 1911
35 & 36 Crutched Friars, 28th January 1912
Yard of 36 Crutched Friars looking north, 11th February 1912
Yard of 36 Crutched Friars looking south, February 11th 1912
Old Broad St looking south, 24th July 1911
Charles Goss (1864-1946)
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Elegy For The White Hart
The White Hart c. 1800 by John Thomas Smith
Charles Goss, one of the first archivists at the Bishopsgate Institute, was in thrall to the romance of old Bishopsgate and in 1930 he wrote a lyrical history of The White Hart, which he believed to be its most ancient tavern – originating as early as 1246.
At the end of the year which saw last orders called at The White Hart forever, I have been reading Goss’ account to compose this elegy for one of London’s oldest inns.
“Its history as an inn can be of little less antiquity than that of the Tabard, the lodging house of the feast-loving Chaucer and the Canterbury pilgrims, or the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, the rendezvous of Prince Henry and his lewd companions.” – CWF Goss
In Goss’ time, Bishopsgate still contained medieval shambles that were spared by the Fire of London and he recalled the era before the coming of the railway, when the street was lined with old coaching inns, serving as points of departure and arrival for travellers to and from the metropolis. “During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, The White Hart tavern was at the height of its prosperity.” he wrote fondly, “It was a general meeting place of literary men of the neighbourhood and the rendezvous of politicians and traders, and even noblemen visited it.”
The White Hart’s history is interwoven with the founding of the Hospital of St Mary Bethlehem in 1246 by Simon Fitz Mary, whose house once stood upon the site of the tavern. He endowed his land in Bishopsgate, extending beneath the current Liverpool St Station, to the monastery and Goss believed the brothers stayed in Fitz Mary’s mansion once they first arrived from Palestine, until the hospital was constructed in 1257 with the gatehouse situated where Liverpool St meets Bishopsgate today. This dwelling may have subsequently became a boarding house for pilgrims outside the City gate and when the first licences to sell sweet wines were issued to three taverns in Bishopsgate in August 1365, this is likely to have been the origin of the White Hart’s status as a tavern.
Yet, ten years later in 1375, Edward III took possession of the monastery as an “alien priory’ and turned it over to become a hospital for the insane. The gateway was replaced in the reign of Richard II and the date ‘1480’ that adorned the front of the inn until the nineteenth century suggests it was rebuilt with a galleried yard at the same time and renamed The White Hart, acquiring Richard’s badge as its own symbol. The galleried yard offered the opportunity for theatrical performances, while increased traffic in Bishopsgate and the reputation of Shoreditch as a place of entertainments drew the audience.
“Vast numbers of stage coaches, wagons, chaises and carriages passed through Bishopsgate St at this time,” wrote Goss excitedly, “Travellers and carriers arriving near the City after the gates had been closed or those who for other reasons desired to remain outside the City wall until the morning, would naturally put up at one of the galleried inns, or taverns near the City gate and The White Hart was esteemed to be one of the most important taverns at that time. Here they would find small private rooms, where the visitors not only took their meals but transacted all manner of business and, if the food dispensed was good enough, the wine strong, the feather beds deep and heavily curtained, the bedrooms were certainly cold and draughty, for the doors opened onto unprotected galleries – but apparently they were comfortable enough for travellers in former days.”
The occasion of Charles Goss’ history of The White Hart was the centenary of its rebuilding upon its original foundations in 1829, yet although the medieval structure above ground was replaced, Goss was keen to emphasise that, “When the tavern was taken down it was found to be built upon cellars constructed in earlier centuries. Those were not destroyed, but were again used in the construction of the present house.” This rebuilding coincided with Bedlam Gate being removed and the road widened and renamed Liverpool St, after the Hospital of St Mary Bethlehem had transferred to Lambeth in 1815. At this time, the date ‘1246 ‘- referring to the founding of the monastery – was placed upon the pediment on The White Hart where it may be seen to this day.
“This tavern which claims to be endowed with the oldest licence in London, is still popular, for its various compartments appear always to be well patronised during the legal hours they are open for refreshment and there can be none of London’s present-day inns which can trace its history as far back as The White Hart, Bishopsgate,” concluded Goss in satisfaction in 1930.
In 2011, permission was granted by the City of London to demolish all but the facade of The White Hart and this year the pub shut for the last time to permit the construction of a nine storey cylindrical office block of questionable design, developed by Sir Alan Sugar’s company Amsprop. Thus passes The White Hart after more than seven centuries in Bishopsgate, and I am glad Charles Goss is not here to see it.
The White Hart from a drawing by George Shepherd, 1810
White Hart Court, where the coaches once drove through to the galleried yard of the White Hart
Design by Inigo Jones for buildings constructed in White Hart Court in 1610
Seventeenth century tavern token, “At The White Hart”
Reverse of the Tavern Token ” At Bedlam Gate 1637″
The White Hart as it appeared in 1787
The White Hart, prior to the rebuilding of 1829
The White Hart in recent years
The White Hart as it stands today
Amsprop’s impression of the future of The White Hart as a facade to a cylindrical office building.
Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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