A New Scheme For Norton Folgate
Could this be the new Truman’s Brewery?
Today I open the next chapter in the story of Norton Folgate by introducing the Spitalfields Trust‘s scheme for renewal of this overlooked ancient quarter of London townscape, developed in collaboration with architect John Burrell of Burrell Foley Fisher. The principle behind this scheme has been to find how Norton Folgate can best serve the people of the East End in terms of employment and housing.
Unlike British Land’s proposal which would entail demolition of more than 70% of the fabric of the site within a Conservation Area, the Spitalfields Trust’s scheme retains more than 95% of the buildings. These would be subject only to light-touch refurbishment with sympathetic new infill matching the scale and materials of the historic structures.
The viability of this scheme is based upon the availability of more than forty separate buildings providing genuinely sustainable and affordable premises, offering possibilities for a significant volume of residential accommodation as well as suiting the requirements of traditional and new industries.
Consultations with local businesses have drawn serious interest from tech industry leaders Second Home and Red Monk, and long-established East End companies, Baddeley Brothers, specialist printers operating at the City fringe since 1859, and Truman’s Beer, first established in Spitalfields in 1666. For Truman’s, the site has the potential to offer a permanent home for their brewery with a tap room bar and a museum of the company’s history, just a couple of hundred yards from where they started in Brick Lane three hundred and fifty years ago. Meanwhile, Keith Evans of Baker St Productions who created the Clerkenwell Workshops has offered to deliver a recording studio and ten live/work units.
Working in partnership with Newlon social housing association, the Spitalfields Trust’s scheme provides fifty-seven affordable residential units, as opposed to only eleven in British Land’s proposal. For the open market, there would be a further fifty-seven residential units as well as the ten live/work units.
The Spitalfields Trust’s scheme is viable and deliverable. It has been submitted to Tower Hamlets Council as a pre-planning application and a copy was sent to the Mayor of London yesterday. As you know, Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee unanimously rejected British Land’s scheme for Norton Folgate in July and this decision was ratified by the Council in August.
This week, the Council’s decision will be passed to the Mayor of London and we need your help urgently to ensure that he does not interfere in the democratic process by intervening on behalf of the developers, as he did with the London Fruit & Wool Exchange which is currently being demolished. Please write to Boris Johnson and ask him to show respect to the people of the East End by upholding the decision of the elected councillors in Tower Hamlets.
This is a simple guide to how to write to Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, asking him to show respect to the people of the East End by upholding the decision of Tower Hamlets Council and not intervening on behalf of British Land.
You can write by email mayor@london.gov.uk (please also provide your postal address in the email) or by post to Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Greater London Authority, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London, SE1 2AA
Please quote application numbers PA/14/03548 & PA/14/03618 and write in your own words giving your own reasons why you think Boris Johnson should not interfere with Norton Folgate, but you might like to consider including the following points.
1. The decision to reject British Land’s application was made democratically by Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee with 4 votes against, 4 abstentions and o votes in favour. This is what the people of East London want.
2. There were more than 550 letters of objection but only 7 in favour.
3. The site is entirely within the Elder St Conservation Area which is protected by the Council’s own Conservation Policy, recommending repair of the buildings – not wholesale demolition as proposed by British Land.
4. The Spitalfields Trust has produced a viable alternative scheme which addresses local housing and employment needs, and preserves the heritage assets for future generations.
Overview of Spitalfields Trust’s Scheme (Click to enlarge)
Blossom St elevation (Click to enlarge)
Norton Folgate elevation (Click to enlarge)
Elder St elevation (Click to enlarge)
Folgate St elevation (Click to enlarge)
John Burrell introduces the Spitalfields Trust’s Scheme
WHAT IT DOES:
This alternative proposal is conceived to fit within the Council’s policies for the Elder St Conservation Area and proposes a scale that reflects its history, and the modest form and scale of the existing four and five storey buildings of Norton Folgate.
It retains 92% of the fabric of the buildings of the designated Conservation Area as an alternative to British Land retaining only 29%.
It demolishes just three buildings and this is confined to those that are unquestionably of poor quality or incomplete.
It has five modest-scale new buildings.
It has thirteen one-or-two storey additions to existing buildings and these are set back at roof level to maintain the scale, height and form of the existing streets.
It is based on maintaining the integrity and identity of over forty buildings, most of which were once under separate ownership and control, which formerly accommodated many different uses that made up the character of Norton Folgate.
It maintains party wall lines.
It maintains an active on-street presence and activity from over seventy separate front doors and entrances at pavement level.
It repairs, restores, and conserves existing facades, their fittings and details.
It retains the existing patina of the buildings without over-restoration and without the removal or re-location of original detail and materials.
It keeps in place the original street surfaces, street furniture, kerbstones, small details, signs, lamps, bollards etc – some of which have Listed Building status.
It opens up existing historic yards and routes through the site e.g. from Commercial St to Blossom St, through the former stable yard.
It establishes the workplaces, homes and the market character of these streets, retaining their essential nineteenth century character, reflecting Norton Folgate as an area that already has historic architectural coherence.
WHAT IT DOES NOT DO:
It is not reliant on Norton Folgate having to be organised as a single development site, necessitating the complete vacation – this alternative scheme can be commenced immediately on a building-by-building basis.
It is does not use architectural pastiche to disguise new buildings.
It does not include merely the retention of façades as a ‘masonry veneer’ fronting-up new floor plates and continuous floor plates behind.
It is not a scheme that creates retro facades as a mask to huge blocks untypical of the grain and scale of Spitalfields.
It does not require the creation of private pedestrian routes under new buildings to replace already existing historic routes through the site.
It will not require a comprehensive level-by-level demolition plan for the entire site.
It does not require a “master plan.”
It does not require a surfeit of reports to justify the destruction and removal of evidence of the history of the site.
SUMMARY
The Spitalfields Trust’s scheme recognizes that Norton Folgate is a vital part of Spitalfields, the loss of which will destroy the character of the Conservation Area.
Although buildings have been emptied in order to realise the developer’s objectives, we have found from our consultations with those wishing to return to the area that there is a massive desire and demand to occupy the buildings – to live, to work and to create new places, and return Norton Folgate to a thriving, vital locality.
Norton Folgate exists already and has no need of a demolition master plan.
Norton Folgate as it is today
British Land want to remove over 70% of the fabric on their site in the Elder St Conservation Area
British Land want to increase the mass of the buildings by more than 50%
The Spitalfields Trust’s proposal
Follow the Campaign at facebook/savenortonfolgate
Follow Spitalfields Trust on twitter @SpitalfieldsT
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At Samuel Pepys’ Library
I paid a visit to Pepys’ Library in Cambridge recently as research for my Cries of London book
You cross the bridge over the River Cam in Cambridge – the one from which the city takes it name – and there is Magdalene College, with a magnificent border of dahlias at this time of year but otherwise not significantly different from when Pepys was an undergraduate there.
Samuel Pepys bequeathed his library of more than three thousand books to his college, where they were installed upon the death of his nephew and heir in 1724 and where they are preserved today. Pepys had them all bound, catalogued according to his own system and stored in order of size in twelve cases manufactured to his design in the workshops at Chatham dockyard. This library can be seen as a natural complement to Pepys’ personal writing – gathering together essential cultural texts and images of the physical world, just as his journal recorded salient detail of his experience of daily life.
Although one volume of Pepys’ diary is open on display in a glass case, revealing the meticulous shorthand he used to write his journal, the rest are not conspicuous within the library. I felt foolish, once I had searched the shelves for the other volumes in vain, so I had no choice but to ask the librarian where they were since I could not visit Pepys’ Library without casting my eyes upon the most famous diaries of all time.
Magnanimously, the librarian led me to one of the cases and directed me to look at the second run of books, set behind those at the front of the shelf. There, at the back, were five modest volumes labelled simply ‘Journal’ and each numbered with a Roman numeral on the spine. It was breathtaking that these works were placed there with such discretion and bound modestly. In setting up his legacy and including the diaries, Pepys must have known that it was only a matter of time before someone read them. Yet it was only in the early nineteenth century that these journals were transcribed, using his shorthand manual in the collection, and the phenomenon of ‘Pepys Diary’ as we know it came into existence.
The earliest collection of Cries of London I have found is that belonging to Samuel Pepys and they are also kept in his library. Driven by his acquisitive nature and infinite curiosity about life, Pepys amassed more than ten thousand engravings and eighteen hundred printed ballads, including several sets of Cries. Alongside those published in his own day, Pepys included those of a generation before, which are among the earliest surviving examples – a significant juxtaposition suggesting he recognised the value of these prints as documents of social history.
In two large albums entitled ‘London & Westminster,’ Pepys arranged his architectural and historical prints of these locations, including a section labelled ‘Cryes consisting of Several Setts thereof, Antient & Moderne: with the differ Stiles us’d therein by the Cryers.’ In these folios, three series of Cries were pasted on successive pages, placing them there as an integral element of the identity of the city as much as the lofty monuments of brick and stone.
Ordered in chronological sequence of their publication, these three series illustrate the evolution of the form of the Cries during the seventeenth century, from a single sheet to a chapbook to a set of individual prints. The earliest set in Pepys’ collection, believed to date from the beginning of the seventeenth century, is described thus ‘A very antient Sett thereof, in Wood, with the Words then used by the Cryers.’
Twenty-four alternating male and female Criers inhabit niches in four storeys of arcades, displaying wares to indicate their identity like medieval saints parading upon an altarpiece. Suggesting a procession through time, they are introduced by the Cryer at daybreak and interrupted by the Bellman and the Watchman, just as the Criers each had their own place within the rhythm of the passing hours.
This is followed on the next page with a set of thirty-two engravings, believed to date from around 1640, described by Pepys as “A later Sett, in Wood – with the Words also then in use.” By comparison with the woodcuts representing stereotypical figures of Criers, these have more self-possession – though close examination reveals that the same models recur, posing in a variety of guises as different street vendors. Yet in spite of these enacted tableaux, there exists a convincing presence of personalities among these Criers – glancing around in circumspection or meeting our gaze with phlegmatic stoicism.
These two anonymous sets from the early and mid-seventeenth century pasted across double spreads are followed by pages of individual prints by Marcellus Laroon. On a more ambitious scale than had been attempted before, they permitted sophisticated use of composition and greater detail in costume by granting each subject their own sheet, thereby elevating the status of the prints as worthy of separate frames.
Laroon was employed as a costume painter in the studio of Sir Godfrey Kneller, who painted Samuel Pepys’ portrait in 1689 which perhaps has drapery by Laroon. Certainly, Pepys acquired drawings by Laroon of the Lord Mayor’s Show and other subjects which were collected into his albums alongside the engravings of Laroon’s Cries from 1687, that were ‘moderne’ for Pepys to the degree that he could caption eighteen of them with the names of the subjects.
Thus, turning the large folio pages of ‘London & Westminster’ invites comparison – and allowed Samuel Pepys to contrast those ‘antient’ prints from his parents’ generation with those of his youth and adulthood, contemplating the hawkers that populated the streets of the city before he was born, distinguishing the differences in their clothing and wares, and wondering at how London had changed in his time.
Pepys’ Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge
‘A very antient Sett thereof, in Wood, with the Words then used by the Cryers’
“A later Sett, in Wood – with the Words also then in use”
Drawn by Marcellus Laroon and published by Pierce Tempest, 1687
Accompanying my book of Cries of London published on 12th November, Bishopsgate Institute is staging a festival around the culture and politics of markets and street trading, and Spitalfields Music is opening its Winter Festival with a concert of Cries of London by Fretwork on 4th December at Shoreditch Church.
I still need a couple more investors for the book and you can learn more here
Who Can Help Me Publish An Illustrated History Of The Cries Of London ?
At Sandwich
I spent my week away from Spitalfields Life working on the Cries of London book but – before summer ends – I decided to take advantage of the sunny weather yesterday with a trip to Sandwich
“There’s always something going on in Sandwich,” I was reliably informed by the guide who welcomed me to an old stone church, and the evidence was all around us in this ancient borough which has acquired so many layers of history over the last thousand years.
If you prefer your architecture irregular in form and mellow with age, this is your place – for Sandwich is one of England’s least-altered medieval towns. Yet the appeal lies not in how it has been preserved but in how it has changed, since every building has been melded over time to suit the evolving needs of its occupants, and the charismatic blend of timber with stonework and stonework with brickwork is sublime.
As I wandered through the quiet streets, I thought about the paradoxical nature of the guide’s comment since Sandwich unquestionably defines the notion of ‘sleepy town,’ even if that afternoon there was a concert in the grounds of the Lutyens house by the river and a fete at the quay. Yet in a more profound sense this has been a location of ceaseless activity since Roman times.
Contrary to popular opinion, ‘Sandwich’ means ‘a settlement built on the sand.’ First recorded in the seventh century, a thriving port and fishing industry grew up here on a sandbank in the days when the river was wider than it is today and the sea came right up to the town. A defensive wall with gates was built around this wealthy trading post and storm tides sometimes surrounded Sandwich, isolating it from the land. One of the pre-eminent ‘Cinque Ports,’ the fleet here offered nautical military service to the Crown in return for trading without taxation. Thus merchants from Venice brought their goods direct to Sandwich and even the King came to buy exotic luxury imports.
“You can easily get lost in Sandwich,” I was cautioned unexpectedly by the attendant at the Museum as I bought my copy of the Civic guide to study the history. It was an unlikely observation that the attendant uttered, since Sandwich is a tiny place, but let me confirm that you can quickly lose your sense of direction, strolling in the maze of small streets and lanes with names like Holy Ghost Alley, Three Kings Yard and Love Lane. An afternoon can fly away once you begin to study the glorious detail and rich idiosyncrasy of eight hundred years of vernacular architecture that is manifest to behold in Sandwich.
If your imagination is set on fire by winding streets of crooked old houses and ancient worn churches paved with medieval tiles and roofed with spectacular wooden vaults, then Sandwich is the destination for you. You really can lose yourself in it and there is always something going on.
St Peter’s Church
The King’s Lodging
Demon of 1592 on the corner of the Kings Arms
St Mary’s Church
St Mary’s Church
Tower of St Mary’s Church
Mermaid at the corner of Delf St
January 1601
The Delf stream was channelled to bring freshwater to Sandwich in the thirteenth century
Horse Pond Sluice
St Clement’s Church has an eleventh century Norman tower
In St Clement’s Church
Fisher Gate with the old Customs House on the right
Fourteenth century Fisher Gate
You may like to read about my previous trips beyond Spitalfields at this time of year
A Walk from Shoeburyness to Chalkwell, 2013
A Tour Of The Cabbies’ Shelters
(Celebrating the sixth anniversary of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite posts from the last twelve months, before recommencing with new stories on 31st August)
Created between 1875 and 1914, sixty of these structures were built by the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund established by the Earl of Shaftesbury to enable cabbies to get a meal without leaving their cabs unattended and were no larger than a horse and cart so they might stand upon the public highway.
Today, only thirteen remain but all are grade II listed and, on my strange pilgrimage around London, I found them welcoming homely refuges where a cup of tea can be had for just 50p.
Thurloe Place, SW7
Embankment Place, Wc2
Wellington Place, NW8
Chelsea Embankment, SW3
Grosvenor Gardens, SW1
St Georges Sq, SW1
Kensington Park Rd, W11
Temple Place, WC2
Warwick Ave, W9
Russell Sq, WC1
Kensington Rd, W8
Pont St, SW1
Hanover Sq, W1
The shelter attendant at Wellington Place has special spoon-bending powers
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Spitalfields Photographed In Kodachrome
(Celebrating the sixth anniversary of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite posts from the last twelve months, before recommencing with new stories on 31st August)
Photographer Philip Marriage rediscovered these colourful images recently, taken on 11th July 1984
Brushfield St
Crispin St
Widegate St
White’s Row
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Fashion St
Widegate St
Artillery Passage
Gun St
Brushfield St
Gun St
Brushfield St
Parliament Court
Leyden St
Fort St
Commercial St
Brushfield St
Photographs copyright © Philip Marriage
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Graham Kennedy, The Directions Man
(Celebrating the sixth anniversary of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite posts from the last twelve months, before recommencing with new stories on 31st August)
“People often ask me what the ‘i’ stands for,” admitted Graham Kennedy proudly, “and I tell them it is the internationally recognised symbol for Information.” Everyone who goes through Liverpool St Station regularly will recognise Graham, he is the eager Directions Man who stands at the Bishopsgate entrance in all weathers, performing a public service by pointing out the way to visitors, those who are lost and anyone who needs guidance to find Spitalfields, Brick Lane and other local destinations.
“I approach people who are looking around and politely ask where they are looking for and are they ok,” he explained to me, “You’ve got to be able to read people and understand their body language, because you can’t just go up to anybody and ask if they need directions.”
When I first noticed Graham, I thought he might be employed by the railway station or the bus company or the tourist board, but then I quickly realised that his was a self-appointed role and I grew curious to know how and why he got there. So I asked the man who spends his days giving directions to others to explain his route to this particular point in his life, standing outside Liverpool St Station.
“I’d from Romford but I was born in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and I grew up in Dagenham, the car manufacturing city. I ended up in this situation after getting divorced eight months ago after being married for twelve years and having two daughters.
Me and my wife started fighting after she began to drink and became someone I didn’t even know. I ended up feeling like a bad person and my children became scared of me and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like myself. So I decided to leave and, for six weeks, I stayed on friends’ settees until I outstayed my welcome.
I got divorced from my wife and I signed the council house over to her, and applied to Dagenham & Barking to get rehoused. I’d been in a council house since I was eighteen years old until the age of thirty-nine and never missed paying my rent. They gave me an interview and, after a thirty minute chat, they said, ‘You’ll get your a decision in ten minutes.’ They said they couldn’t help me because I’d chosen to leave and made myself homeless. They gave me a list of homeless shelters and I was shocked. If I’d lied and said she threw me out, they’d have given me a council home. That was when I realised that it doesn’t always benefit you to be honest.
My parents have been divorced for twenty years. My mother lives in Dagenham and my father has just been put in prison for six years at seventy-three years old after being caught delivering a packet of cocaine. But I’ve always been working, I had a job ever since I left school at fifteen years old and I was an electrician for twenty-two years. It’s impossible for me to find a job now because my ex-wide sold all my tools. I did contract work for Tower Hamlets, Westminster and City of London Councils. That’s why I came up to London once I became homeless, because I know my way around the city.
I started living on the street and I got a fireman’s key from a hardware shop so I could sleep in stairwells, to keep safe and warm and charge my phone. But then I became part of a circle of people that I was taking heroin and crack cocaine with, which I’d never done before in my life. I was on heroin for six to seven months until I got myself medicated, and that went on for three months. I’m no longer on medication, so now I am clean.
I started giving directions four months ago. I didn’t want to beg and I’ve always thought about what people need, and I’m keen to be useful and of service to others. It’s quite legal as long as I don’t ask for money. So, once I have given directions, I say, ‘Excuse me, would consider buying me a tea or coffee?’ There are three things that will happen. They’ll say, ‘No,’ or they’ll give me their spare change, or they’ll buy me a tea or coffee. I’ve learnt that being helpful is a lot more appreciated than just hanging around asking for money.
On Sunday, I stand outside Aldgate East but mostly I am here at Liverpool St. Thursday is the biggest day, it’s been like that for a while. People work until Thursday then go for a night out to relax, and then they get through Friday and rest at the weekend. From four until eight, you will find me at Aldgate East then I go to Liverpool St until midnight, and afterwards I go to Shoreditch and wander around and give directions until six in the morning.
I meet people of all nationalities and walks of life. I’ve had people give me their number and say, ‘Call me if you need help or money,’ but I never call them, I don’t know why. After a year and a half sleeping on the street and in stairwells, I met a Christian and I gained a friend. For the last seven weeks, I’ve been living with him on Brick Lane and repairing his flat and mending all his appliances.
I’ve learnt that you don’t need to have money, you can find anything you want in the city if you know where to look. If you know what time to go round to the back of Tesco in Commercial St, you can find as much food as you want being thrown out.
In the next couple of months, I’ll start looking for a job and get my own place and start seeing my children on a regular basis. I talk to them on the phone but it’s not the same thing.”
Graham Kennedy
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The Oldest Tree in Bethnal Green
(Celebrating the sixth anniversary of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite posts from the last twelve months, before recommencing with new stories on 31st August)
Thanks to an invitation from one of the readers, I had the opportunity of making the acquaintance of the oldest tree in the East End, a dignified tottering specimen known as the Bethnal Green Mulberry. It is more than four hundred years old and once served to feed the silkworms cultivated by local weavers.
The Mulberry originally grew in the grounds of Bishop Bonner’s Palace that stood on this site and an inkwell in the museum of the Royal London Hospital, made in 1915 from a bough, has a brass plate engraved with the sardonic yarn that the Bishop sat beneath it to enjoy shelter in the cool of the evening while deciding which heretics to execute.
My visit was a poignant occasion since the Mulberry stands today in the grounds of the London Chest Hospital which opened in 1855 and closed forever last April prior to being put up for sale by the National Health Service in advance of redevelopment. My only previous visit to the Hospital was as a patient struggling with pneumonia, when I was grateful to come here for treatment and feel reassured by its gracious architecture surrounded by trees. Of palatial design, the London Chest Hospital is a magnificent Victorian philanthropic institution where the successful campaign to rid the East End of tuberculosis in the last century was masterminded.
It was a sombre spectacle to see workmen carrying out desks and stripping the Hospital of its furniture, and when a security guard informed me that building had been sold for twenty-five million and would be demolished since “it’s not listed,” I was shocked at the potential loss of this beloved structure and the threat to the historic tree too. Yet as far as I am aware, no formal decision has been made about the future of the Hospital’s fabric and, thankfully, the Mulberry is subject to a Tree Preservation Order.
Gainly supported by struts that have become absorbed into the fibre of the tree over the years, it was heartening to see this ancient organism coming into leaf once more and renewing itself again after five centuries. The Bethnal Green Mulberry has seen palaces and hospitals come and go, but it continues to bear fruit every summer regardless.
The Mulberry narrowly escaped destruction in World War II and charring from a bomb is still visible
The London Chest Hospital opened in 1855 and closed forever this spring
Ancient Mulberry in Victoria Park which may be a contemporary of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
