Night On Brick Lane
Contributing Photographer Phil Maxwell sent these recent photographs of Brick Lane at night which inspired me to make a short nocturnal progress from Whitechapel High St to the Bethnal Green Rd by way of this most-celebrated East End thoroughfare and write you an account.
Even on Tuesday evening, I discovered a hubbub of activity down in Whitechapel High St when I reached the tail end of Brick Lane, more properly known as Osborn St at its southern extremity.
This was where I first arrived in 1976, coming round the corner from Aldgate East Station and walking up Brick Lane in search of the London I knew from Daniel Defoe’s ‘Journal of a Plague Year.’ It was Defoe who first recorded the paving-over of Brick Lane three centuries earlier but I do not recall what I expected to find that day. Once I reached the Truman Brewery, there were so many trucks loading and unloading in the street I felt as if I had entered the precincts of the brewery itself and overwhelmed by the intensity of activity in this unfamiliar zone, I ventured no further.
I cannot count the number of times I have walked up Brick Lane since then and now I can travel the journey in my mind almost as clearly as on foot. Yet it is a street that is constantly changing, even if daily familiarity can render these changes imperceptible.
I wonder if Brick Lane was originally the path to and from the White Chapel, which formerly stood where the park is now just across the road from the foot of Osborn St? There is curious line of canteen-like curry houses catering to the corporate City customers in Osborn St before you reach my favourite travel agent which still advertises tickets for Concord, facing the mysteriously-large electricity substation opposite. Until recently in Osborn St, there was also Elfe’s, the monumental masons, serving as a discreet memento mori to those enjoying their dinners on the other side of the road.
Brick Lane proper begins at the junction with Wentworth St where, across the crossroads, The Archers faces the Brooke Bond Tea factory at One Brick Lane which is now an unlabelled outpost of Rupert Murdoch’s empire. At this point, the mix is established of curry houses, money changers, grocers, gaudy sweet shops, interspersed with newly-arrived estate agents, all casting a multicoloured glow onto the pavement and turning the passers-by to silhouettes against their vivid illuminations.
Just before the junction with Fashion St, Leo Epstein presides over Epra Fabrics, the last Jewish business in this part of Brick Lane. Only he had gone home long ago when I passed last night, even if the lights were still burning within. Here you find a cluster of new arrivals from across the globe, a Japanese barber, an Argentinian grill and a French bistro to add to the cultural mix in the shadow of the minaret.
Walking on, I entered the busiest section of Brick Lane, where I was personally offered seven meals accompanied by free rounds of drinks before I reached the Truman Brewery. Yet if had acquiesced to all these deals, I never should have made it beyond Hanbury St.
The meeting of Hanbury St and Brick Lane is surely the epicentre of the world. In the neon glow, you encounter discount vintage hawkers and curry touts full-on, while becoming an unwitting participant in Street Art tours and occasionally stumbling over the street artists at work in the dark – all while doing your best to avoid the speedy drivers showing off and the cyclists weaving through the crowd.
After Woodseer St, the atmosphere changed. On a week night, the madding crowds packing in to Dray Walk were absent. There was no police van or portable pissoir. Instead, pedestrians walked quietly beneath the walls of the great brewery overhead, dark now the Vibe bar no longer overflowed the courtyard with inebriated revellers. Fifty yards up, the familiar sight of the writers group, meeting after-hours at the Brick Lane Bookshop, indicated a more sedate mid-week atmosphere.
Beyond here the buildings give way to the railway bridges above and below. At weekends, this becomes a seething torrent of humanity crowded between the food stalls but on a quiet Tuesday night, lonely walkers hurried through.
This last section of Brick Lane is devoted to leather, vintage clothing and coffee shops but, once these close for the day, the bars take over – picking up a lively passing trade. And the twenty-four hour Beigel Bakery is the final landmark, before you reach the end of the known world at the Bethnal Green Rd.
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
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Publication Day for Phil Maxwell’s ‘Brick Lane’
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Click here to buy a copy of Phil Maxwell’s Brick Lane for £10
Stories Of Norton Folgate, Old & New
For those readers who were unable to visit Dennis Severs House in Folgate St to view the exhibition I curated for the Spitalfields Trust, I am publishing these panels from the display with my text telling the stories of old Norton Folgate, outlining British Land’s development proposals and setting forward the Trust’s alternative vision for the future.
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click on each panel to enlarge
Click here for a simple guide to HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY prepared by The Spitalfields Trust
Follow the Campaign at facebook/savenortonfolgate
Follow Spitalfields Trust on twitter @SpitalfieldsT
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Dan Cruickshank in Norton Folgate
Taking Liberties in Norton Folgate
Colin O’Brien, Photographer Of London Life
Can you spot Colin O’Brien, the photographer of LONDON LIFE, popping up behind his mother with Leica in hand while she was trying on hats in a department store on Oxford St in the nineteen-fifties? Colin’s mother looks puzzled yet patient while he takes the second picture. I wonder if she ever imagined where it would all lead?
Looking at the photographs of Colin aged seven with his Box Brownie and as a teenager with his first Leica, his destiny as a photographer might seem obvious to us. But I do not think Colin realised then that the affectionate snaps he took of the childhood world he knew growing up in Clerkenwell at the edge of the City of London, post-war, would become such a compelling photographic testimony in retrospect.
Today it is my pleasure to publish this gallery of rare images of Colin in front of the lens, taken by family and friends, illustrating the growth of the young photographer to maturity.
Yesterday, I announced the publication of LONDON LIFE in June, compiling more than two hundred of Colin’s photographs from 1948 until the present day into a handsome hardback photographic monograph tracing the everyday lives of Londoners through seven decades. As with our other titles, I need to gather a group of readers who are willing to invest £1000 each. Please drop me a line at Spitalfieldslife@gmail.com if you would like to help bring this exciting project to fruition and I will send you further information.
Additionally, you can support publication by pre-ordering LONDON LIFE from the Spitalfields Life Online Bookshop and we will send you a signed copy in June with a complimentary copy of Colin’s previous book, TRAVELLERS’ CHILDREN IN LONDON FIELDS as a gesture of appreciation.
Colin’s parents on their wedding day in 1938, taken on the steps of Victoria Dwellings in the Clerkenwell Rd where Colin grew up
Colin marches in the Clerkenwell Italian procession in the early forties
Colin with his first camera, a Box Brownie
Colin photographed by Solly, a local Photographer in Exmouth Market
Colin’s parents with their young son the roof of Victoria Dwellings, Clerkenwell
Colin is Head Boy at Sir John Cass School, Aldgate
Colin with his first Leica
Colin on the roof of Victoria Dwellings with St James Clerkenwell in the background
A self-portrait, skylarking with pals at the Kardomah Cafe, Oxford St
Colin looking sharp in the sixties
Colin looking with-it in the seventies
Colin at his photography show on Waterloo Station
The Gentle Author’s portrait of Colin O’Brien on the balcony of the flat in Michael Cliffe House, Clerkenwell, which Colin moved into with his parents when it was newly-built in 1966.
If you would like to help me publish LONDON LIFE, a monograph of Colin O’Brien’s photographs from 1948 until the present day, please drop me a line at Spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
Click to pre-order a copy of Colin O’Brien’s LONDON LIFE published by Spitalfields Life
Click here to see over fifty stories that Colin has photographed for Spitalfields Life
Cover design by Friederike Huber
Over the winter, I have been collaborating with Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & Designer Friederike Huber to create a handsome hardback photographic monograph of Colin’s pictures entitled LONDON LIFE and now I am appealing to my readers to help us publish it in June.
Containing more than two hundred photographs arranged chronologically and selected from seven decades of work in the capital, LONDON LIFE is a social record of breathtaking expanse and I believe Colin OʼBrienʼs superlative photography – distinguished by its human sympathy and aesthetic flair – stands comparison with any of the masters of twentieth century British photography.
Since 1948, Colin has been photographing the life of Londoners, capturing dramatic and affectionate images which speak eloquently of change and continuity in the daily existence of the city and its people. Born in Clerkenwell in 1940, Colin was a photographic prodigy, graduating from taking pictures of his pals with a Box Brownie at eight years old to using a Leica in his teenage years and photographing the car crashes outside his window, at the junction of Clerkenwell Rd and Farringdon Rd.
In those days, Colin took his films down the Fleet St in person where his pictures often found their way into the pages of national newspapers and ever since he has pursued a personal photographic project of recording the drama of London life.
Out of hundreds of pictures, two stand out for me as milestones. One is Colin’s tender photograph of his mother taken in the fifties. In the picture, she is making tea in the scullery of Victoria Dwellings, the tenement where he grew up but which the family left when Finsbury Council rehoused them in the newly-built Michael Cliffe House. This early photograph witnesses another world to that of Colin’s recent portrait of Jasmine Stone and her little daughter, taken when they were evicted from a hostel in Newham last year and occupied an empty Council House as a protest against the disposal of social housing by the Local Authority.
At this current moment of unprecedented change, when much of the history of the capital is threatening with being erased by redevelopment, Colin O’Brien’s LONDON LIFE is an important book that grants us a necessary perspective in time, reminding us of the journey that we – as Londoners – travelled to get here.
As with our other titles, I need to gather a group of readers who are willing to invest £1000 each. Please email Spitalfieldslife@gmail.com if you would like to help bring this exciting project to fruition and I will send you further information.
Additionally, you can support publication by pre-ordering LONDON LIFE from the Spitalfields Life Online Bookshop and we will send you a signed copy in June with a complimentary copy of Colin’s previous book, TRAVELLERS’ CHILDREN IN LONDON FIELDS as a gesture of appreciation.
Colin’s mother makes tea in the scullery in Victoria Dwellings, Clerkenwell
Raymond Scallionne & Razi Tuffano, Hatton Garden in 1948
Daytime accident in Clerkenwell, 1957
Snow in Clerkenwell on New Year’s Eve, 1961
Piccadilly Circus at night, 1959
Colin’s mother tries on hats in Oxford St in the fifties
Playing on a bombsite in the City of London
Oxford St at Christmas
Safeway Supermarket in the sixties
Battersea with the power station in the distance, sixties
Kids skylarking in the seventies
Regents Canal, Hackney
Brick Lane Market, eighties
Ice Cream kids, eighties
On Chatsworth Rd, eighties
Diana Dead, nineties
Demolishing a tower block in Hackney, 1999
Baby at a fair in Victoria Park
The last day of Clerkenwell Fire Station, 2014
Speakers’ Corner, 2014
Spitalfields Nativity 2014
Jasmine Stone, Focus E15 Mothers, Newham 2014
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
If you would like to help me publish LONDON LIFE, a monograph of Colin O’Brien’s photographs from 1948 until the present day, please drop me a line at Spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
Click to pre-order a copy of Colin O’Brien’s LONDON LIFE published by Spitalfields Life
Click here to see over fifty stories that Colin has photographed for Spitalfields Life
Nippers At The National Portrait Gallery
Burne-Jones’ Works in the East End
These photos record the moment when Horace Warner introduced the Spitalfields Nippers to the Whitechapel Gallery at its opening in 1901. Now it is my pleasure, over a century later, to present the Spitalfields Nippers at The National Portrait Gallery in an illustrated lecture on Thursday April 2nd at 7pm, showing the photographs and telling the stories surrounding their creation.
Sir Edward Burne-Jones “If hope were not, hearts should break”
Tired of Art – A little Dorset St sleeper in Whitechapel Picture Gallery
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Click here to order a copy of Horace Warner’s SPITALFIELDS NIPPERS
Capper & Sons Of Gracechurch St
If any readers are considering investing in new outfits for spring, they might find some ideas here in these plates of over a century ago from Capper & Sons of 63 & 64 Gracechurch St, High Class Tailors, Riding Habit & Breeches Makers, & Juvenile Outfitters, courtesy of the Bishopsgate Insitute.
Single Breasted Chesterfield Overcoat – in soft black and blue llama
Cappers’ ‘Seymour’ Coat – made in new west of England waterproof coatings
Lounge Jacket Suit – in all the latest shades of Cashmere
Double Breasted Loung or Yachting Suit – in navy blue serge or cheviots and striped flannels
Morning Coat & Waistcoat – in black cheviot, llama and various cloths
Frock Coat & Waistcoat – in black Vicuna with silk facings
Double Breasted Chesterfield Overcoat – in Venetians, Beavers and Vicunas
Double Breasted Travelling Ulster – in waterproof but not airproof cloth
Dress Jacket Suit – in fine elastic twill or vicuna
Dress Suit – lined throughout in silk with silk facings
Norfolk Jacket & Knicker Suit – in west of England, Scotch & Irish tweeds
Boys’ Harrow Suit – in Cappers’ indestructible school suitings
Boys’ Eton Suit – made to measure in fine elastic twill
Cappers’ ‘Cottesmore’ Habit – with Norfolk plaits back and front
Cappers’ Quorn Habit – in fine Meltonian cloth for hard wear
Images Courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You might like to read these other stories about commerce in Bishopsgate & Gracechurch St
Businesses in Bishopsgate 1892
At James Ince & Sons, Umbrella Makers
Charles Goss’ Bishopsgate Photographs
Save The Trees Of Spitalfields
We need the trees in Spitalfields to remind us that these were once fields. In front of the 1927 Fruit & Wool Exchange are a line of six magnificent London Plane trees that have stood there for a generation in Brushfield St, yet these are now threatened with felling by Exemplar Properties, the developers, who seek to get rid of them to make the demolition of the building easier.
As many readers will remember, almost nobody in Spitalfields wanted the redevelopment of the Fruit & Wool Exchange into corporate offices and a shopping mall. Tower Hamlets Council voted unanimously twice to reject the proposal but Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, exercised his autocratic power to overrule them and force the development on us.
So we are losing the Fruit & Wool Exchange and The Gun pub – and now, to add insult to injury, Exemplar Properties want to cut down our trees too. Yet there is no actual necessity to do this to construct the new building and the trees are in a Conservation Area where preservation of the quality of the environment should be paramount. The trees provide an attractive green canopy in summer and offer dramatic silhouettes against Christ Church in winter. They are healthy, strong specimens between thirty to forty years old and are not a safety hazard, so there is no justification for their removal. Felling these trees serves no-one’s interests but Exemplar Properties.
The truth is that we shall need these trees even more in future to ameliorate the environmental damage of the construction project and then to provide a measure of screening from the overblown development when it is complete.
They have taken the Fruit & Wool Exchange and The Gun against the wishes of the majority of local people, but it is in our power to stop them taking the trees.
Click here to register your objection to the felling of the trees in Brushfield St
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