The Wallpapers Of Fournier St
One house in Fournier St has wallpapers dating from 1690 until 1960. This oldest piece of wallpaper was already thirty years old when it was pasted onto the walls of the new house built by joiner William Taylor in 1721, providing evidence – as if it were ever needed – that people have always prized beautiful old things.
John Nicolson, the current owner of the house, keeps his treasured collection of wallpaper preserved between layers of tissue in chronological order, revealing both the history and tastes of his predecessors. First, there were the wealthy Huguenot silk weavers who lived in the house until they left for Scotland in the nineteenth century, when it was subdivided as rented dwellings for Jewish people fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe. Yet, as well as illustrating the precise social history of this location in Spitalfields, the wider significance of the collection is that it tells the story of English wallpaper – through examples from a single house.
When John Nicolson bought it in 1995, the house had been uninhabited since the nineteen thirties, becoming a Jewish tailoring workshop and then an Asian sweatshop before reaching the low point of dereliction, repossessed and rotting. John undertook a ten year renovation programme, moving into the attic and then colonising the rooms as they became habitable, one by one. Behind layers of cladding applied to the walls, the original fabric of the house was uncovered and John ensured that no materials left the building, removing nothing that predated 1970. A leaky roof had destroyed the plaster which came off the walls as he uncovered them, but John painstakingly salvaged all the fragments of wallpaper and all the curios lost by the previous inhabitants between the floorboards too.
“I wanted it to look like a three hundred year old house that had been lovingly cared for and aged gracefully over three centuries,” said John, outlining his ambition for the endeavour, “- but it had been trashed, so the challenge was to avoid either the falsification of history or a slavish recreation of one particular era.” The house had undergone two earlier renovations, to update the style of the panelling in the seventeen-eighties and to add a shopfront in the eighteen-twenties. John chose to restore the facade as a domestic frontage, but elsewhere his work has been that of careful repair to create a home that retains its modest domesticity and humane proportions, appreciating the qualities that make these Spitalfields houses distinctive.
The ancient wallpaper fragments are as delicate as butterfly wings now, but each one was once a backdrop to life as it was played out through the ages in this tottering old house. I can envisage the seventeenth century wallpaper with its golden lozenges framing dog roses would have gleamed by candlelight and brightened a dark drawing room through the Winter months with its images of Summer flowers, and I can also imagine the warm glow of the brown-hued Victorian designs under gaslight in the tiny rented rooms, a century later within the same house. When I think of the countless hours I have spent staring at the wallpaper in my time, I can only wonder at the number of day dreams that were once projected upon these three centuries of wallpaper.
Flowers and foliage are the constant motifs throughout all these papers, confirming that the popular fashion for floral designs on the wall has extended for over three hundred years already. Sometimes the flowers are sparser, sometimes more stylised but, in general, I think we may surmise that, when it comes to choosing wallpaper, people like to surround themselves with flowers. Wallpaper offers an opportunity to inhabit an everlasting bower, a garden that never fades or requires maintenance. And maybe a pattern of flowers is more forgiving than a geometric design? When it comes to concealing the damp patches, or where the baby vomited, or where the mistress threw the wine glass at the wall, floral is the perfect English compromise of the bucolic and the practical.
Two surprises in this collection of wallpaper contradict the assumed history of Spitalfields. One is a specimen from 1895 that has been traced through the Victoria & Albert Museum archive and discovered to be very expensive – sixpence a yard, equivalent to week’s salary – entirely at odds with the assumption that these rented rooms were inhabited exclusively by the poor at that time. It seems that then, as now, there were those prepared to scrimp for the sake of enjoying exhorbitant wallpaper. The other surprise is a modernist Scandanavian design by Eliel Saarinen from the nineteen twenties – we shall never know how this got there. John Nicolson likes to think that people who appreciate good design have always recognised the beauty of these exemplary old houses in Fournier St, which would account for the presence of both the expensive 1895 paper and the Saarinen pattern from 1920, and I see no reason to discount this theory.
I leave you to take a look at this selection of fragments from John’s archive and imagine for yourself the human dramas witnessed by these humble wallpapers of Fournier St.
Fragments from the seventeen-twenties
Hand-painted wallpaper from the seventeen-eighties
Printed wallpaper from the seventeen-eighties
Eighteen-twenties
Eighteen-forties
Mid-nineteenth century fake wood panelling wallpaper, as papered over real wooden panelling
Wallpaper by William Morris, 1880
Expensive wallpaper at sixpence a yard from 1885
1895
Late nineteenth century, in a lugubrious Arts & Crafts style
A frieze dating from 1900
In an Art Nouveau style c. 1900
Modernist design by Finnish designer Eliel Saarinen from the nineteen-twenties
Nineteen-sixties floral
Vinyl wallpaper from the nineteen-sixties
Items that John Nicolson found under the floorboards of his eighteenth-century house in Fournier St, including a wedding ring, pipes, buttons, coins, cotton reels, spinning tops, marbles, broken china and children’s toys. Note the child’s leather boot, the pair of jacks found under the front step, and the blue bottle of poison complete with syringe discovered in a sealed-up medicine cupboard which had been papered over. Horseshoes were found hidden throughout the fabric of the house to bring good luck, and the jacks and child’s shoe may also have been placed there for similar reasons.
Schrödinger, Shoreditch Church Cat
Schrödinger, the incumbent feline
At the end of last summer, Robin Gore-Hatton, Verger of St Leonard’s in Shoreditch, noticed a skinny cat hanging around the portico and gave him food and water. “He was thin and hungry, so I took pity on him,” Robin admitted to me.
A lithe and limber creature, Schrödinger disposed of the church’s mouse problem with alacrity, thus earning his keep in exchange for services in pest control. “Like most cats, I realise he adopted his owner rather than the other way around,” Robin added, acknowledging that Schrödinger has now established himself as a permanent fixture at the church.
Conscientious in his duties, Schrödinger may usually be found at his customary position sitting discreetly beneath a table just inside the door where he observes the constant flow of visitors, retreating under the pews when crowds arrive. “He’s shy,” confirmed Robin, “but it’s like he’s biding his time to assert his presence.” Certainly, frayed corners of two hessian-covered notice boards in the side aisle attest to Schrödinger marking his territory.
“It does feel like he’s the boss,” Robin confessed to me with a helpless grin, as we strolled around the church with Schrödinger following close at his ankles in expectation of dinner time. “Only I feed him,” Robin whispered in covert explanation,“otherwise everyone would give him food and he’d grow fat.”
Yet in spite of his usual feline qualities, there is also an air of mystery to this implacable creature that is capable of vanishing and reappearing without explanation. “Sometimes at night, he disappears,” Robin confided, “and then I find him in the morning asleep in the crypt – I think he feels at home down there, which is something we share in common.”
Schrödinger and Robin Hatton-Gore, Verger at St Leonard’s – “It does feel like he’s the boss”
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The Cats of Spitalfields (Part One)
The Cats of Spitalfields (Part Two)
Blackie, the Last Spitalfields Market Cat
and read about
An Offer To Buy Norton Folgate
The Spitalfields Trust scheme for Norton Folgate
The British Land scheme for Norton Folgate
Incredibly, both these visualisations show the same view – eloquently illustrating the polarity of competing visions in the contest for the future of Norton Folgate.
Forty years ago, the Spitalfields Trust – with the help of Sir John Betjeman – defeated British Land in their attempt to demolish the historic streets in this northern corner of Spitalfields but now, like an unwelcome remake of an old movie, British Land are back with a larger and meaner development scheme which entails destroying more than seventy per cent of the fabric of their site which sits within a Conservation Area.
Back in 1977, the conflict was resolved by Tower Hamlets Council, who supported the Spitalfields Trust, but in this new century local democracy no longer holds sway and the Mayor of London is able to intervene in favour of the developers. His hearing takes place tomorrow and, after a dozen such ‘call-ins’ in which he has overturned the decision of the local council in every case, the outcome appears predetermined.
Yet there is a new character in the drama and his name is Troels Holch Povlson, a Danish Billionaire Conservationist. He is offering to buy the site off the City of London, matching and – if necessary exceeding – what they paid for it plus what they stand to profit from it, in order that British Land’s development be abandoned and the Spitalfields Trust scheme go ahead.
While the British Land development is about achieving the maximum financial return by packing the largest volume of corporate office space onto the site and obliterating Norton Folgate in the process, Troels Holch Povlson recognises a different value in Norton Folgate that consists in repairing the historic buildings and retaining a diversity of use.
Conventional economics might suggest that British Land must prevail but now Troels Holch Povlson’s offer is on the table, a different outcome proposes itself which delivers the required economic return and saves Norton Folgate too.
Sir John Betjeman & Dan Cruickshank in the first battle against British Land in Norton Folgate in 1977
Click to enlarge this letter sent to all hundred Common Councillors in the City of London this week
Troels Holch Povlson, Billionaire Conservationist (Photograph by Sarah Ainslie)
Readers are encouraged to attend the Norton Folgate hearing in the chamber at City Hall on Monday 18th January at 2pm. Click here for further information
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Standing Up To The Mayor of London
Join Hands to Save Norton Folgate
Snowdrops At The Physic Garden
The Snowdrop Theatre
Today is the first Snowdrop Day at Chelsea Physic Garden. Each year, I rise early and take the District Line over to West London to join the other passionate horticulturalists at opening time. The Garden is closed during winter months but these special openings permit the opportunity to admire the drifts of snowdrops, supplemented by rare species on display in a Snowdrop Theatre and a sale of exotic varieties.
The snowdrops in my garden in Spitalfields have already been in flower for a couple of weeks, encouraging my anticipation of seeing those at the Physic Garden. Through the passing years, the wonder of these flowers that appear in the depths of winter, glowing white against the dark earth as the first harbingers of spring, has never dimmed for me. Yet such is my short-sightedness, I wonder whether the differentiation of multiple varieties may be no more than academic in my case.
Fortunately, the Physic Garden has strategies to bring snowdrops to your eye level. As you come through the entrance in Swan Walk, you encounter snowdrops growing in moss balls hanging from the trees – in the Japanese style – and then you arrive at the Snowdrop Theatre where sixteen different specimens line up for your scrutiny behind a crimson proscenium. To my mind, there has always been a drama in the appearance of snowdrops emerging out of the darkness and, placed in a theatre, their natural stage presence delivers an effortless performance worthy of applause.
Once you have taken a stroll through the woodland planting upon the southern edge of the garden where clumps of snowdrops may be viewed in an approximation of their natural environment, attending by starry yellow aconites and pale-hued hellebores, you visit the marquee where dozens of varieties are lined up on a long table just waiting for you take them home and cherish them.
I pace up and down, peering over and looking closely to ascertain the precise nature of the distinctions between all these snowdrops – some in showcases containing expensive varieties at thirty and sixty pounds a pop. Yet I cannot not bring myself to favour any particular example over another. The differences are immaterial to me because I love all snowdrops equally.
Moss balls planted with snowdrops hang from trees
Hellebore
Aconites
Selecting snowdrops from dozens of varieties on sale
Sir Hans Sloane leased the land for the Chelsea Physic Garden to the Society of Apothecaries in 1673
SNOWDROP DAYS run at the Chelsea Physic Garden, 66 Royal Hospital Rd, Chelsea, until Sunday 24th January from 10am-4pm – including a variety of lectures, walks & workshops with snowdrop experts.
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Standing Up To The Mayor Of London
This winter, Spitalfields has become a battleground and – thanks to the intervention of the Mayor of London – this is Christ Church seen from across the muddy waste where the Fruit & Wool Exchange used to be. Historically, only Henry VIII has been responsible for a greater degree of destruction in the neighbourhood, when he ‘dissolved’ the Priory of St Mary Spital with its large public hospital in the fifteen-thirties and took the fields to create an artillery ground for his soldiers to practise.
If Boris Johnson gets his way by approving the overblown developments in Norton Folgate next week and upon the Bishopsgate Goods Yard in March, he will surpass Henry VIII to become the single most destructive influence upon Spitalfields. Yet, in common with other tyrants, there is a degree of arrogance involved and in Boris’ haste to determine these building schemes before he is out of office in the spring, mistakes have been made which present the opportunity to stop him.
In his tenure, the Mayor has exercised his authority to over-rule local authorities and give his approval to a dozen development schemes in London, which makes the outcome of his forthcoming call-ins for Norton Folgate and Bishopsgate Goods Yard appear predetermined. As if – in the case of Norton Folgate – the designation of the site as a Conservation Area, more than seven hundred letters of objection (two hundred discounted for lack of postal address), a unanimous rejection by the Tower Hamlets Development Committee and five hundred people joining hands around the site, count for nothing in face of the wishes of one man.
Through a Freedom of Information request, the Spitalfields Trust has uncovered procedural irregularities in the handling of the Norton Folgate case which amount to the Mayor erring in law. Consequently, they have launched a Judicial Review challenging the legitimacy of the call-in and rendering next Monday’s hearing a charade in which the Mayor’s decision will be worthless pending the Judicial Review.
The Mayor and the officers of the Greater London Authority are obligated to read planning applications and assess them objectively and neutrally, yet a member of staff at GLA sent an email to British Land’s consultants DP9 at 10:48am on 10th September – the morning the application arrived at City Hall – confirming the Mayor’s intention to call in the application. Although the GLA had already been consulting with developer British Land, they did not take time to examine application in any depth even though they had fourteen days to do so.
Text of email to British Land’s Planning Consultants DP9 from Greater London Authority sent at 10:38am on 10th September the day of receipt of the Norton Folgate Application.
“Hi [name redacted], Yes the report will advise that the application has a significant impact on the implementation of the London Plan and a significant effect on more than one borough and there are therefore sound planning reasons for the Mayor to intervene in this case, as per the powers of the Mayor’s Order 2008. The Mayor will make a final decision on this following the meeting on the 23rd.[name redacted]”
Additionally, the Spitalfields Trust asserts that the Mayor’s decision to call in the application was unlawful on several other grounds. They question his claim the Norton Folgate development would have any significant impact on the London Plan because it is relatively small and they reject his statement that the Norton Folgate development will have an impact on the adjoining boroughs of Hackney and City of London when the site is entirely within Tower Hamlets.
Eventually, someone was going to challenge the Mayor’s belligerent style and it is happening in Spitalfields because no less than the future of our neighbourhood is at stake, and we will not let it go to serve the whim of one capricious individual.
Click here to read the full text of the Judicial Review documentation
Demolition of the Fruit & Wool Exchange
Future devastation in the Norton Folgate Conservation Area if the Mayor gets his way
Readers are encouraged to attend the Norton Folgate hearing in the chamber at City Hall on Monday 18th January at 2pm. Click here for further information
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Join Hands to Save Norton Folgate
Dan Cruikshank in Norton Folgate
The Holland Estate Is Saved
This week, in response to a triumphant campaign, residents of Holland Estate have received letters from East End Homes revoking the demolition notices that were served upon them last year.
In 2015, social landlord East End Homes submitted a pre-planning application for demolition of the Estate next to Petticoat Lane prior to any consultation with the people who live there and a member of the staff of East End Homes told residents their homes were “unfit for human habitation.”
So Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I visited flats on the Estate to take these portraits and assess the accommodation for ourselves. We found the gracious brick structures are built of better quality materials than most modern developments and are humanely conceived, offering hospitable living spaces which are cherished and well-maintained by the occupants.
Working in partnership with Telford Homes, social landlord East End Homes proposed demolishing the Estate and replacing it with a high-rise development mixing private and social housing but, for the meantime, this plan is dismissed.
Ali Sahed Goyas & Jahnara Choudhury have lived on the Holland Estate for twenty-five years
Pascha Singh has lived on the Holland Estate for more than thirty years
Mahjdiyat, Shammi, Manveen & Arshan Ahmed at home
Yolanda De Los Buies has lived on the Holland Estate for seventeen years
Saleha Khanam with her son Shamsur Rahman and his wife Rushna Begum and their children Yaseen and Hamza – Four generations of this family have lived on the Holland Estate
Azar Ali has lived on the Holland Estate for thirty-one years
Nessa Aifun cares for her husband Rustum at home
Saleh Ahmed & Rusnobun Bibi and their grandchildren Aakifah & Ismael
Kabir Ahmed & Nasrin Rob with their children Aakifah & Ismael
Murtata Choudhury has lived on the Holland Estate for fifty years
Shikiko Aoyama Sanderson & Jarrod Sanderson have lived on the Estate for six years
Samirun Chowdhury with Saima Chowdhury and Taher Uddin outside Samirun & Saima’s home
Enrico Bonadio has lived on the Holland Estate for three years
Rob Ali, Ali Sayed Goyas, Asab Miah, Murtata Choudhury, Saleh Ahmed with Aakifah Ahmed & Mohammed Ismael Ali
Photographs copyright @ Sarah Ainslie
You can follow the Residents Against Demolition campaign on
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Twitter @bbcresidents
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The First Rhubarb Of The Season
Lillie O’Brien & I were at Covent Garden Market before dawn to get the pick of the crop of forced rhubarb. It is the only English fruit that is in season now and we bought it straight off the truck that had driven down overnight from the famous Yorkshire Triangle, where a frost pocket sweetens the rhubarb naturally and, after four generations, the Oldroyd family still grow rhubarb by candlelight in the time-honoured method. Once upon a time there was a Rhubarb Express to deliver trainloads of rhubarb to the hordes of eager Londoners craving rhubarb, but yesterday there was just Lillie & me seeking rhubarb while the city slept.
Formerly a pastry chef at St John Bread & Wine, these days Lillie O’Brien is the London Borough of Jam – a one-woman operation producing small batches of the highest quality preserves from the freshest seasonal ingredients. Our joint mission was to buy the best rhubarb, drive back to Lillie’s tiny kitchen in Clapton and make it into jam. At five thirty, we were driving down to Covent Garden and by ten thirty we had jam, it was a highly satisfactory achievement for so early on a January morning.
At the market, we were greeted by Paul & Terry of Lenards wholesalers. By then, the night’s trading was already over but it was the ideal opportunity for a rhubarb hunt and Paul & Terry were the expert guides to lead us to the best options available. The one diversion from our rhubarb quest was for blood oranges from Sicily, and as I stood in the sub-zero temperature of the market, I was transported to Southern climes by the intense sweetness of the ruby-red flesh of this gleaming golden fruit. Lily took a box to make some marmalade.
We found fat rhubarb and thin rhubarb, long rhubarb and short rhubarb. Some that was past its best and some that looked rather pale. Apparently, chefs like fat rhubarb to create chunks in their crumble, but Lillie prefers a smooth texture to her jam and when she opened a box of skinny rhubarb – blushing almost coral in its redness – her eyes widened in excitement and I knew we were in business.
In a state of raging anticipation, we carried our crates of gleaming rhubarb into Lillie’s tiny kitchen and Lillie shrieked with excitement at the ice-cold water as she washed the stalks in the sink. We paused briefly to admire the aesthetics of the curly dappled flowers before we beheaded them mercilessly and Lillie chopped one kilo of rhubarb into small pieces, while Chester her cheeky blue cat rubbed at her ankles.
Since the age of twelve, Lillie worked at a part-time job at a food store called Tartine in her home town of Melbourne, where she grew up under the influence of her mother’s cookery. “When I was a child, my mother made crab apple jelly but when you are little, you don’t like it – so she had a cupboard to herself with a year’s supply.” Lillie recalled with a sentimental grin. On leaving school, Lillie did a three year cooking apprenticeship and then five years as a chef at the celebrated Cicciolina mediterranean bistro before deciding to come travelling around Europe for six months. A tour that was cut short when a pal walked into St John Bread & Wine to ask if there were any jobs, was told a pastry chef was required and gave Lillie’s name. “I went in for a trial and stayed for four years,” admitted Lillie, “which I have to say went very quickly. I made the jam and preserves while I was there. But then I decided wanted to be part of the market at Chatsworth Rd and I found that working at St John by day and making jam all night was quite tough. So it was time to move on from cheffing – from four years of rolling puff pastry that has given me enlarged muscles in my neck and from whisking eggs that has caused one arm to grow larger than the other! But I do miss it though…”
Lillie talked as she worked, weighing up the rhubarb and then transferring it to her beautiful copper jam pan. Copper is the best conductor of heat which means that the fruit will cook evenly, avoiding any overcooking that might compromise the flavour. This is why Lillie cooks her jam in small batches because larger amounts take longer to cook and the fruit does not cook consistently. Adding jam sugar and then the juice of a lemon, Lillie kept stirring as the liquid evaporated and the rhubarb reduced to an even texture. Meanwhile, she heated the jam jars and boiled the lids, both to sterilise them and to ensure that her hot jam had a hot jars to go into into, so there was no risk of the glass breaking.
Lillie constantly checked the consistency of the jam, its viscosity revealed by how it dripped from the spoon. Then she added the finely chopped stem ginger and the jam was almost ready. “I’m so happy, I’m beside myself with the colour! This is going to be the most beautiful rhubarb jam I ever made.” she declared in unmitigated delight, as she poured it from the pan through her jam funnel, making just four jars. This painstaking technique required Lillie to spend the rest of the day working through her twelve kilogrammes of rhubarb, yet ensured the unmediated fruitiness that characterises her jam.
An essential trip to Gardners Market Sundriesmen was required to purchase more labels for this new batch of jam before Paul Gardner left for the weekend, which meant that Paul was the lucky recipient of the first pot of jam. Then Lillie returned to her kitchen for a long day’s jam-making before writing the labels that evening, and all so the rhubarb & ginger jam can be on sale this weekend.
A lush deep pink jam with a vivid flavour that is more rhubarb than even rhubarb, a perfectly spreadable texture and a subtle piquancy of ginger – this is what I shall be having on my toast at breakfast, thanks to the London Borough of Jam.
Washing the rhubarb
Weighing the rhubarb
The rhubarb in Lillie’s jam pan
Adding the jam sugar
Testing the consistency
Rhubarb & Ginger Jam by the London Borough of Jam
Paul Gardner of Gardners Market Sundriesmen gets the first pot of rhubarb & ginger jam
You can buy jams and preserves by London Borough of Jam at Leila’s Shop, Violet Cakes & E5 Bakery, and each weekend from Lillie’s shop at 51d Chatsworth Rd, E5 0LH.
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