At Midsummer On Primrose Hill
On Tuesday 23rd June at 7pm, Colin O’Brien will giving an illustrated lecture at Waterstones Piccadilly, showing his photographs and telling more stories of LONDON LIFE. Please mail piccadilly@waterstones.com to book your free ticket. Meanwhile, Colin’s exhibition at The Society Club in Soho runs until 1st August.
In the grove of sacred hawthorn
At Midsummer, Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & I joined the celebrants of the Loose Association of Druids on Primrose Hill for the solstice festival hosted by Jay the Tailor, Druid of Wormwood Scrubs. As the most prominent geological feature in the Lower Thames Valley, it seems likely that this elevated site has been a location for rituals since before history began.
Yet this particular event owes its origin to Edward Williams, a monumental mason and poet better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg, who founded the Gorsedd community of Welsh bards here on Primrose Hill in June 1792. He claimed he was reviving an ancient rite, citing John Tollund who in 1716 summoned the surviving druids by trumpet to come together and form a Universal Bond.
Consequently, the Druids begin their observance by gathering to honour their predecessor at Morganwg’s memorial plaque on the viewing platform at the top of the hill, where they corral bewildered tourists and passing dog walkers into a circle to recite his Gorsedd prayer in an English translation. From here, Colin & I joined the Druids as they processed to the deep shade of the nearby sacred grove of hawthorn where biscuits and soft drinks were laid upon a tablecloth with a bunch of wild flowers and some curious wooden utensils.
Following at Jay the Tailor’s shoulder as we strode across the long grass, I could not resist asking about the origin of his staff of hawthorn intertwined with ivy. “It was before I became a Druid, when I was losing my Christian faith,” he confessed to me, “I was attending a County Fair and a stick maker who had Second Sight offered to make it for me for fifteen pounds.” Before I could ask more, we arrived in the grove and it was time to get the ritual organised. Everyone was as polite and good humoured as at a Sunday school picnic.
A photocopied order of service was distributed, we formed a circle, and it was necessary to select a Modron to stand in the west, a Mabon to stand in the north, a Thurifer to stand in the east and a Celebrant to stand in the South. Once we all had practised chanting our Greek vowels while processing clockwise, Jay the Tailor rapped his staff firmly on the ground and we were off. A narrow wooden branch – known as the knife that cannot cut – was passed around and we each introduced ourselves.
In spite of the apparent exoticism of the event and the groups of passersby stopping in their tracks to gaze in disbelief, there was a certain innocent familiarity about the proceedings – which celebrated nature, the changing season and the spirit of the place. In the era of the French and the American Revolutions, Iolo Morganwr declared Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association. Notions that retain strong resonance to this day.
Once the ritual wound up, we had exchanged kisses of peace Druid-style and everyone ate a biscuit with a gulp of apple juice, I was able to ask Jay the Tailor more questions.“I lost my Christian faith because I studied Theology and I found it difficult to believe Jesus was anything other than a human being, even though I do feel he was a very important guide and I had a personal experience of Jesus when I met Him on the steps of Oxford Town Hall,” he admitted, leaving me searching for a response.
“When I was fourteen, I went up Cader Idris at Midsummer and spent all night and the next day there, and the next night I had a vision of Our Lady of Mists & Sheep,” he continued helpfully,“but that just added to my confusion.” I nodded sagely in response.“I came to Druids through geometry, through studying the heavens and recognising there is an order of things,” he explained to me, “mainly because I am a tailor and a pattern cutter, so I understand sacred geometry.” By now, the other Druids were packing up, disposing of the litter from the picnic in the park bins and heading eagerly towards the pub. It had been a intriguing day upon Primrose Hill.
“Do not tell the priest of our plight for he would call it a sin, but we have been out in the woods all night, a-conjuring the Summer in!” – Rudyard Kipling
Sun worshippers on Primrose Hill
Memorial to Iolo Morganwg who initiated the ritual on Primrose Hill in 1792
Peter Barker, Thurifer – “I felt I was a pagan for many years. I always liked gods and goddesses, and the annual festivals are part of my life and you meet a lot of good people.”
Maureen – “I’m a Druid, a member of O.B.O.D. (the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids), and I’ve done all three grades”
Sarah Louise Smith – “I’m training to be a druid with O.B.O.D. at present”
Simeon Posner, Astrologer – “It helps my soul to mature, seeing the life cycle and participating in it”
John Leopold – “I have pagan inclinations”
Jay the Tailor, Druid of Wormwood Scrubs
Iolo Morgamwg (Edward Williams) Poet & Monumental Mason, 1747-1826
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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At The Launch Of London Life
Thankyou to everyone who came along to celebrate the launch of Colin O’Brien’s London Life, also to Truman’s Beer for providing us with unlimited refreshment and especially to The Society Club for hosting the event so magnificently. Contributing Photographer Simon Mooney slipped among the crowds to capture all the drama of a euphoric night in Soho.
Colin O’Brien photographed by Bob Mazzer, photographer of Underground, at the launch of London Life
Colin signed books for three hours non-stop
Crowds converged at The Society Club on Thursday night
Henrietta Keeper from Bethnal Green sang for the assembled throng
Patricia Niven greets Frederike Huber
Colin O’Brien congratulates book designer Friederike Huber
Robson Cezar, King of the Bottletops handed out posters to all
Babette Kulik of The Society Club meets Bob Mazzer
Photographer Patricia Niven takes a quiet peek at Colin’s book
Photographs copyright © Simon Mooney
On Tuesday 23rd June at 7pm, Colin O’Brien will giving an illustrated lecture at Waterstones Piccadilly, showing his photographs and telling stories of LONDON LIFE. Please mail piccadilly@waterstones.com to book your free ticket.
Meanwhile, Colin’s photography exhibition at The Society Club, Ingestre Place, Soho, W1, runs until 1st August.
Alice Pattullo’s Alphabet
For the past year and a half, illustrator Alice Pattullo has been working at her studio in London Fields to create this splendid portfolio of screen prints of animals for each letter of the alphabet and it is my pleasure to publish the entire set of twenty-six for the first time today
A is for Armadillo who is short stout and round
B is for Beetle who stays close to the ground
C is for Crab who crawls on the sea bed
D is for Dove who likes to fly overhead
E is for Elephant who is anything but light
F is for fox who roams the city streets at night
G is for grizzly bear, a fierce looking fellow
H is for Hippo who is altogether more mellow
I is for Iguana a large scaly reptile
J is for jack rabbit who jumps mile after mile
K is for Kangaroo who takes hop, skip and bound
L is for leopard who moves fast across the ground
M is for Moth, a winged friend of the butterfly
N is for Nautilus who in his shell is quite shy
O is for okapi, our strange stripy friend
P is for polar bear who lives at world’s end
Q is for quail whose bright head feathers are fun
R is for Rhino who weights almost a tonne
S is for sloth who hangs and sleeps in a tree
T is for turtle who swims through the sea
U is for uakari whose face is small, wrinkly and red
V is for viper whose bite might leave you dead
W is for Whale, the biggest animal of them all
X is for Xantus who is remarkably small
Y is for Yak, like a cow with long hair
Z is for Zebra, so stripy you might stare
Copyright ©Alice Pattullo
Alice has produced an edition of thirty screen prints of each letter, sized at 60 x 60 cm, and priced at £100 each. If you would like buy prints email alice@alicepattullo.com
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The Man Who Photographed Car Crashes
See you at the launch of Colin O’Brien’s LONDON LIFE at The Society Club, Ingestre Place, Soho, W1 from 6pm tonight Thursday 18th June and preview the photography exhibition which runs until 1st August.
We will be serving complimentary Truman’s Beer, giving away posters of Colin’s famous Clerkenwell Car Crash photograph and each copy of LONDON LIFE bought at the exhibition comes with a complimentary copy of Colin’s first book, TRAVELLERS’ CHILDREN IN LONDON FIELDS.
Also, on Tuesday 23rd June at 7pm, Colin will giving an illustrated lecture at Waterstones Piccadilly, showing the photographs and telling stories of LONDON LIFE. Email piccadilly@waterstones.com to book your free ticket for this.
On publication day for LONDON LIFE, I present Colin O’Brien’s Clerkenwell car crash photographs
Accident, daytime 1957
When photographer Colin O’Brien lived at Victoria Dwellings on the corner of Clerkenwell Rd and Faringdon Rd, there was a very unfortunate recurring problem which caused all the traffic lights at the junction to turn green at once. In the living room of the top floor flat where Colin lived with his parents, an ominous “crunch” would regularly be heard, occasioning the young photographer to lean out of the window with his box brownie camera and take the spectacular car crash photographs that you see here. Unaware of Weegee’s car crash photography in New York and predating Warhol’s fascination with the car crash as a photographic motif, Colin O’Brien’s car crash pictures are masterpieces in their own right.
Yet, even though they possess an extraordinary classically composed beauty, these photographs do not glamorise the tragedy of these violent random events – seen, as if from from God’s eye view, they expose the hopeless pathos of the situation. And, half a century later, whilst we all agree that these accidents were profoundly unfortunate for those involved, I hope it is not in poor taste to say that, in terms of photography they represent a fortuitous collision of subject matter and nascent photographic talent. I say this because I believe that the first duty of any artist is to witness what is in front of you, and this remarkable collection of pictures which Colin took from his window – dating from the late forties when he got his first camera at the age of eight until the early sixties when the family moved out – is precisely that.
One day, I accompanied Colin when he returned to the junction of the Clerkenwell Rd and Faringdon Rd in the hope of visiting the modern buildings upon the site of the former Victoria Dwellings. To our good fortune, once we explained the story, Tomasz, the superintendent of Herbal Hill Buildings, welcomed Colin as if he were one of current residents who had simply been away for the weekend. Magnanimously, he handed over the keys of the top flat on the corner – which, by a stroke of luck, was vacant at that time – so that Colin might take pictures from the same vantage point as his original photographs.
We found a split-level, four bedroom penthouse apartment with breathtaking views towards the City, complete with statues, chandeliers and gold light switches. It was very different to the modest, three room flat Colin lived in with his parents where his mother hung a curtain over the gas meter. Yet here in this luxury dwelling, the melancholy of the empty rooms was inescapable, lined with tired beige carpet and haunted with ghost outlines of furniture that had been taken away. However, we had not come to view the property, we had come to look out the window and after Colin had opened three different ones, he settled upon the perspective that most closely correlated to his parents’ living room and leaned out.
“The Guinness ad is no longer there,” he commented – almost surprised – as if, somehow, he expected the reality of the nineteen fifties might somehow be restored up here. Apart from the blocks on the horizon, little had changed, though. The building on the opposite corner was the same, the tube embankment and bridge were unaltered and the Clerkenwell Court House where Dickens once served as cub reporter still stands. I left Colin to his photography as he became drawn into his lens, looking back into the midst of the last century and upon the urban landscape that contained the emotional history of his youth.
“It was the most exciting day of my life, when we left,” admitted Colin, with a fond grin of reminiscence, “Canvassers from the Labour Party used to come round asking for our votes and my father would ask them to build us better homes, and eventually they did. They built Michael Cliffe House, a tower block in Clerkenwell, and offered us the choice of any flat. My parents wanted one in the middle but I said, ‘No, let’s get the top flat!’ and I have it to this day. I took a photo of lightning over St Paul’s from there, and ran down to Fleet St and sold it to the Evening Standard.”
Colin O’Brien’s car crash photographs fascinate me with their intense, macabre beauty. As bystanders, unless we have specialist training, car crashes only serve to emphasise the pain of our helplessness at the destructive intervention of larger forces, and there is something especially plangent about these forgotten car crashes of yesteryear. In a single violent event, each one dramatises the sense of loss that time itself engenders, as over the years our tenderest beloved are taken from us. And they charge the photographic space, so that even those images without crashes acquire an additional emotionalism, the poignancy of transience and the imminence of potential disaster. I can think of no more touching image of loneliness that the anonymous figure in Colin O’Brien’s photograph, crossing the Clerkenwell Rd in the snow on New Year’s Eve, 1961.
After he had seen the interior of Herbal Hill Buildings, Colin confided to me he would rather live in Victoria Dwellings that stood there before, and yet, as he returned the keys to Tomasz, the superintendent, he could not resist asking if he might return and take more pictures in different conditions, at a different time of day or when it was raining. And Tomasz graciously assented as long as the apartment remained vacant. I understood that Colin needed the opportunity to come back again, now that the door to the past had been re-opened, and, I have to confess to you that, in spite of myself, I could not resist thinking, “Maybe there’ll be a car crash next time?”
Accident in the rain.
Accident in the rain, 2.
Snow on New Year’s Eve, 1961.
Trolley buses, nineteen fifties.
Clerkenwell Italian parade, nineteen fifties.
Firemen at Victoria Dwellings, nineteen fifties.
‘Have a Guinness when you’re tired’
Colin’s photograph of the junction of the Clerkenwell Rd and Faringdon Rd from Herbal Hill Buildings that stand today on the site of the former Victoria Dwellings.
When Colin O’Brien saw his childhood view for the first time in fifty years
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
CLICK HERE TO BUY A COPY OF LONDON LIFE DIRECT FROM SPITALFIELDS LIFE
The Photographer From Clerkenwell
Celebrate with me at the launch of Colin O’Brien’s LONDON LIFE at The Society Club, Ingestre Place, Soho, W1 from 6pm tomorrow Thursday 18th June and preview his photography exhibition.
Also, on Tuesday 23rd June at 7pm, Colin O’Brien will giving an illustrated lecture at Waterstones Piccadilly, showing the photographs and telling stories of LONDON LIFE. Please email piccadilly@waterstones.com to book your free ticket for this.
On the eve of publication of LONDON LIFE, I present this introduction to the work of Colin O’Brien
Observe this tender photograph of Raymond Scallionne and Razi Tuffano in Hatton Garden in 1948, one of the first pictures taken by Colin O’Brien – snapped when he was eight years old, the same age as his subjects. Colin forgot this photograph for over half a century until he discovered the negative recently and made a print, yet when he saw the image again, he immediately remembered the boys’ names and recalled arranging them in front of the car to construct the most pleasing composition for the lens of his prized box brownie.
Colin grew up fifty yards from Hatton Garden in Victoria Dwellings, a tenement at the junction of Faringdon Rd and Clerkenwell Rd – the centre of his childhood universe in Clerkenwell, which Colin portrayed in spellbinding photographs that evoke the poetry and pathos of the forgotten threadbare years in the aftermath of World War II. “We had little money or food, and shoes were a luxury. I remember being given my first banana and being told not to eat it in the street where someone might take it,” he told me, incredulous at the reality of his own past,“Victoria Dwellings were very run down and I remember in later years thinking, ‘How did people live in them?'”
Blessed with a vibrant talent for photography, Colin created images of his world with an assurance and flair that is astounding in one so young. And now these pictures exist as a compassionate testimony to a vanished way of life, created by a photographer with a personal relationship to all his subjects. “I just wanted to record the passage of time,” Colin told me with modest understatement, “There were no photographers in the family, but my Uncle Will interested me in photography. He was the black sheep, with a wife and children in Somerset and girlfriends in London, and he used to come for Sunday lunch in Victoria Dwellings sometimes. One day he brought me a contact printing set and he printed up some of my negatives, and even now I can remember the excitement of seeing my photographs appear on the paper.”
Colin O’Brien’s clear-eyed Clerkenwell pictures illustrate a world that was once familiar and has now receded far away, yet the emotionalism of these photographs speaks across time because the human detail is touching. Here is Colin’s mother spooning tea from the caddy into the teapot in the scullery and his father at breakfast in the living room before walking up the road to the Mount Pleasant Sorting Office, as he did every day of his working life. Here is Mrs Leinweber in the flat below, trying to eke out the Shepherd’s Pie for her large family coming round for dinner. Here is the Rio Cinema where Colin used to go to watch the continuous programme, taking sandwiches and a bottle of Tizer, and forced to consort with one of the dubious men in dirty raincoats in order to acquire the adult escort necessary to get into the cinema. Here is one of the innumerable car crashes at the junction of Clerkwenwell Rd and Faringdon Rd that punctuated life at Victoria Dwellings – caused by lights that were out of sync, instructing traffic to drive in both directions simultaneously – a cue for Colin to reach out the window of their top floor flat to capture the accident with his box brownie and for his mother to scream, “Colin, don’t lean out too far!”
At fifteen years old, Colin’s parents bought him Leica camera. “They couldn’t afford it and maybe it came off the back of a lorry, but it was a brilliant present – they realised this was what I wanted to do,” he admitted to me with an emotional smile. “My first job was at Fox Photo in the Faringdon Rd. I worked in the library, but I spent all my time hanging around in the dark room because that was where all the photographers were and I loved the smell of fixer and developer.” he recalled, “And if I stayed there I would have become a press photographer.” But instead Colin went to work in the office of a company of stockbrokers in Cornhill in the City and then for General Electric in Holborn –“I hated offices but I aways got jobs in them” – before becoming a photographic lab technician at St Martins School of Art and finally working for the Inner London Education authority in Media Resources, a role that enabled him to pursue his photography as he pleased throughout his career.
Over all this time, Colin O’Brien has pursued his talent and created a monumental body of photography that amounts to over half a million negatives, although his work is barely known because he never worked for publication or even for money, devoting himself single-mindedly to taking pictures for their own sake. Yet over the passage of time, as a consequence of the purism of his approach, the authority of Colin O’Brien’s superlative photography – distinguished by its human sympathy and aesthetic flair – stands comparison with any of the masters of twentieth century British photography.
Members of the Leinweber family playing darts at the Metropolitan Tavern, Clerkenwell Rd, 1954
In the Clerkwenwell Rd, fifties
Skinner St, Clerkwenwell, 1963
Colin’s mother in the scullery at Victoria Dwellings, fifties
Linda Leinweber, 117 Victoria Dwellings, fifties
Colin’s father eats breakfast before work at the Mount Pleasant Sorting Office
Jimmy Wragg and Bernard Roth on a bomb site in the City of London, late fifties
Accident at the junction of Clerkwell Rd and Faringdon Rd, 1957
Mrs Leinweber divides the Shepherd’s Pie among her family, Victoria Dwellings, 1959
Skinner St, Clerkenwell, 1954
Hazel Leinweber, Victoria Dwellings, fifties
Fire at Victoria Dwellings, mid-fifties
Colin’s mother outside her door, 99 Victoria Dwellings, fifties
At Woolworths, Exmouth Market, 1954
At Woolworths, Exmouth Market, 1954
Cleaning the windows, Clerkenwell Rd, 1957
Cowboy and girlfriend, 1960
Nun sweeping in the Clerkenwell Rd, sixties
Colin’s window at Victoria Dwellings was the third from the end on the top floor
An old lady awaiting meals-on-wheels in Northcliffe House, Clerkenwell, late seventies
Demolition of Victoria Dwellings in the seventies
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
CLICK HERE TO BUY A COPY OF LONDON LIFE DIRECT FROM SPITALFIELDS LIFE
At Spitalfields Oldest Family Business
Five years ago, I first wrote about Paul Gardner of Gardners Market Sundriesmen when he was being confronted with unrealistic rent increases which threatened to close his shop down, yet thanks to the widespread support shown by the community at that time Paul was able to face off the landlord’s agent. But now Paul Gardner’s rent is up for negotiation again and we all need to stand behind him, if we are not to lose Spitalfields oldest family business.
Paul Gardner, Paper Bag Baron of Spitalfields
I always delight to drop into the premises of my friend Paul Gardner – the paper bag seller of Gardners Market Sundriesman, 149 Commercial St – to observe the constant parade of long-standing customers who pass through, creating the life of this distinctive business. It was early one morning, when I called round at six-thirty – opening time – to enjoy a quiet chat before the rush, that Paul explained to me his great-grandfather James Gardner began trading here in this building as a Scalemaker when it was built in 1870 – which means Paul is a fourth generation Market Sundriesman and makes Gardners the longest established family business in Spitalfields.
Paul still has his great-grandfather’s accounts from the end of the nineteenth century, when as Scalemakers they serviced the scales for all the traders in the fruit and vegetable market on a regular basis. Turning the pages and scanning the lines of James’ fine copperplate handwriting your eye alights upon the names, Isaac, Isaiah and Ezekiel, indicative of the Jewish population that once defined the identity of Spitalfields. There is an ancient block of wood with three scoops carved out that are smoothed with wear, it has been in use since the days of Paul’s great-grandfather. Then his son Bertie (Paul’s grandfather) used it, then Bertie’s son Roy (Paul’s father) used it and Paul still keeps his cash in it today. As the twentieth century wore on, each of the successive Mr Gardners found that customers began to expect to buy their produce in a paper bag (a trend which is now reversed) and so the trade of dealing in bags supplanted the supply of scales entirely over four generations.
Turn your back on the traffic rattling down Commercial St and stand for a moment to contemplate the dignified Brunswick green frontage of Gardners Market Sundriesman. An old glass signs reads “Paper & Polythene Bag Merchant” and, sure enough, a variety of different coloured bags are festooned on strings like bunting, below them are some scales hinting at the origins of the business and then your attention is distracted by a mysterious wooden sieve, a memento of Paul’s grandfather. Enter the shop to be confronted by piles of bags of every variety in packets stacked up on either side and leaving barely any room to stand. Only two routes are possible, straight ahead leading into the dark recesses where the stacks grow taller and closer together in the gloom or turn right to the makeshift counter, improvised from an old counter-top supported upon yet more packets of bags. Beneath the fluorescent glow, the dust of ages is settling upon everything. You think you have entered a storeroom, but you are wrong because you neglected to notice Paul sitting at the counter in a cosy corner, partly concealed by a stack of bags. You turn to greet him and a vista appears with a colourful display of bags and tags and tapes and those old green-grocers’ signs that say “Today’s price 2/8” and “Morning Gathered” – which creates a pleasant backdrop to the figure of Paul Gardner as he stands to greet you with a genial “Hello!”
With his wavy grey locks, gentle face, sociable manner and innate decency, Paul could have stepped from another age and it is a joy to meet someone who has successfully resisted the relentless imperative to haste and efficiency at any cost, that tyrannises our age and threatens to enslave us all. When you enter the shop, you enter Paul’s world and you discover it is a better place than the one outside.
Paul was thirteen when his father Roy died unexpectedly in 1968, creating a brief inter-regnum when his mother took over for four years until he came of age. “I came here the first day after I left school at seventeen,” said Paul, “It was what I wanted to do. After the first year, my mother stopped coming, though my nan used to live above the shop then. I haven’t had a day off since 1972. I don’t make much money, I will never become a millionaire. To be honest, I try to sell things as cheap as I can while others try to sell them as expensive as they can. I do it because I have done it all my life. I do it because it is like a family heirloom.”
Paul Gardner’s customers are the stallholders and small businessmen and women of East London, many of whom have been coming for more than twenty years, especially loyal are the Ghanaian and Nigerian people who prefer to trade with a family business. Paul will sell small numbers of bags while other suppliers only deal in bulk, and he offers the same price per bag for ten as for a hundred. Even then, most of his customers expect to negotiate the price down, unable to resist their innate natures as traders. Paul explained to me that some have such small turnovers they can only afford to buy ten carrier bags at a time.
In his endeavours, Paul supports and nurtures an enormous network of tiny businesses that are a key part of the economy of our city. Many have grown and come back with bigger and bigger orders, selling their products to supermarkets, while others simply sustain themselves, like the Nigerian woman who has a stall in Brixton market and has been coming regularly on the bus for twenty-three years to buy her paper bags here. “I try to do favours for people,” says Paul and, in spontaneous confirmation of this, a customer rings with the joyous news that they have finally scraped enough money together to pay their account for the last seven years. Sharing in the moment of triumph, Paul laughs down the phone, “What happened, did you win the lottery or something?”
Paul has the greatest respect for his customers and they hold him in affection too. In fact, Paul’s approach could serve as a model if we wish to move forward from the ugliness of the current business ethos. Paul only wants to make enough to live and builds mutually supportive relationships with his customers over the longterm based upon trust. His is a more equitable version of capitalism tempered by mutual respect, anchored in a belief in the essential goodness rather than the essential greediness of people. As a fourth generation trader, Paul has no business plan, he is guided by his beliefs about people and how he wants to live in the world. His integrity and self-respect are his most precious possessions.“I have never advertised,” says Paul, “All my customers come because they have been recommended by friends who are already my customers.”
However, after Gardners survived two World Wars and the closure of the market, there is now a new threat in the form of rent increases demanded by greedy agents on commission, who can easily exploit the situation when chain stores eager to have a presence in the neighbourhood can pay high rents which they do not need to match with turnover. “I earn two hundred and fifty pounds a week,” reveals Paul with frank humility, “If I earned five hundred pounds a week, I could give an extra two hundred and fifty towards the rent but at two hundred and fifty pounds a week, the cupboard is bare.”
Ruminating upon the problem,“They’ve dollied-up the place round here!” says Paul quietly, in an eloquently caustic verdict upon this current situation in which his venerable family business finds itself now, after a hundred and forty years, in a fashionable shopping district with a landlord seeking to maximize profits. Paul needs to renegotiate his lease in a way that does not leave him solely working to pay the rent and we must support Paul by sending more business his way, because Paul is a Spitalfields legend we cannot lose. But more important than the history itself, is the political philosophy that has evolved over four generations of experience. It is the sum of what has been learnt. In all his many transactions, Paul unselfconsciously espouses a practical step-by-step approach towards a more sustainable mode of society. Who would have expected that the oldest traders in Spitalfields might also turn out to be the model of an ethical business pointing the way to the future?
Paul’s grandfather Bertie Gardner, standing with Paul’s father Roy Gardner as child outside the shop around 1930
Roy Gardner, now a grown man, standing outside the shop after World War II, around 1947
Gardners Market Sundriesmen, 149, Commercial St, Spitalfields, E1
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Ubiquitous Unique
I could not decide whether to laugh or cry when I visited UBIQUITOUS UNIQUE organised by RECLAIM LONDON at the Red Gallery in Rivington St.
Displaying elevations of generic box-like new buildings planned for London – captioned with the hyperbolic texts used to promote these developments – the exhibition exposes the aesthetic bankruptcy of much contemporary architecture to startling effect.
Reclaim London asks ““What future are we constructing? It is not our future as a collective. No one has asked us. Other people are making these decisions.”
“The tower element of Plot 1 is intended to be ‘iconic’, and visible from a distance. It is designed to signal the regeneration of the market site.”
“The development will feature distinctive contemporary architecture. Rich in variety, it draws from the heritage of west London”
“A stunning tower adding to Central London’s dynamic skyline. The place from which to write your own life story…The apartments take their inspiration from the culture and landscape of Lexicon’s location. The result is an experience that breathes luxury, glamour and delight into every home.”
“A large-scale one-off regeneration project between Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, an area famous for its eclectic style and diverse community. Recognised for its strong sustainability ethos and distinctive contemporary architecture, the development will comprise stylish apartments, town houses and mews houses.”
“The limited visibility of this tower, within a dense urban environment, will do little more than reinforce the internal coherence of the residential conservation areas to the east and north east. The proposed development will recede within long views, and sit comfortably within the more immediate townscape.” (Heritage Appraisal)
“We firmly believe that it is the right location for a landmark building.” (Press Statement)
“One of the very few places in London where you can live, work and play right by the river.”
“The primary objectives were to develop a design which responds to and embraces its location – both in its immediate local setting and in its larger context, that has an appropriate sense of scale both at street level and in the areas where it can be viewed at a distance.”
“The building design has been refined to have a more sympathetic relationship between both The Old Post Office and The Telephone Exchange…A regular pattern of windows provides a calmness and order to the façade with lightweight upper storey punctuating the skyline.”
“Key Objectives: To create a landmark building emphasizing the gateway to and identity of the village and the wider area, with a distinctive architectural identity.”
“A game-changing breed of building designed by Terry Farrell & Partners. Think drop-dead gorgeous architectural details. Interiors designed for the design conscious. Communal space created to bring people together.”
“Fourteen storey landmark development for Alperton”
“Contributes to the enhancement or creation of local distinctiveness.” (Heritage Appraisal)
“As part of the redevelopment, land will be gifted to Lambeth Council to create a new primary school.”
“A rare place in London where people can live in and around outstanding modern architecture.”
“The proposals seek to respect the form, scale and grain of the surrounding townscape, and will make a positive contribution to the character of the area.” (Planning Statement)
