So Long, Sclater St Yard Market
Here are my profiles, illustrated with portraits by Jeremy Freedman, of some of the traders in the Sclater St Yard Market (on the car park between Sclater St & Bacon St) who will be displaced when it closes for redevelopment of the site after tomorrow’s Sunday market.
This is Jacqueline & Michael Barnes, who sell stationery together under an awning on the yard in Sclater St. “We’ve been here on this pitch about twenty-five years,” ventured Jacqueline proudly, welcoming me her to her personal kingdom of immaculately organised envelopes and felt pens. “I’m originally from Paddington, and Mike, he’s the same as me, from Paddington.” she explained, shaking her head when I enquired if she was a local, before revealing that the couple have been seduced by the East End, “We moved over to Stratford because we wanted a quiet life, and now we’re living out in the sticks.” Michael ran around serving customers with an eager grin, stretching for items with his long limbs while Jacqueline held court, chatting to me and the near-constant stream of regulars who dropped in to convey their week’s news and pick up some cheap biros and post-it notes. “It’s not been good for months and we just do it to keep ourselves amused.” she whispered discreetly, when there was a lull, “We are pensioners now, and I look forward to coming down here – all the stallholders, we have a laugh and a joke together.”
These three keen lads from Essex are Sam, Jack & Perry, two brothers and a pal, who between them run a long stall, selling a spectacular selection of cheap tools and bicycle locks, which stretches the entire length of the yard in Sclater St. “It’s my dad’s business,” explained Sam, the eldest brother who is in charge, taking a respite from the intensity of the milling crowd and his ear-splitting banter –“I took over this bit about three years ago.” It makes for a compelling drama, as with eagle eyes, the three of them watch over the thousands of tools piled up, exchanging wary glances and sharp patter, while a ceaseless parade of customers passes along the stall. Sam’s skinny little brother Jack has been here each Sunday for several years, though he is still at school for another two years. “I was brought up around it and I’ll do this when I leave,” he informed me with a blush, his grey eyes glowing in anticipation, “and hopefully we’ll still be here in thirty years time.”
This is Kevin and his dad Tom who sell men’s casual wear at bargain prices in the Sclater St yard.“I started setting up and taking down the stalls for the traders when I was still at school, and then at fifteen I started trading on my own.” Kevin admitted with to me relish, “I left school early because I was earning more than the teachers.” Kevin, a magnanimous gentle giant who overshadows his father, has been trading for twenty years now and since Tom took early retirement, he comes to help Kevin out. “I work six days a week, sixteen hours a day nowadays,” Kevin told me as we sat in the afternoon shade at the back of his van while his father stood out on the empty yard awaiting customers -“It’s a measure of how hard we have to try these days to keep the money up.” Yet Kevin is undaunted by the challenge of market life in the recession.“I don’t like being beaten, so I’ll hang in,” he told me, catching his father’s attention with a grin and a nod. “Who could ask for anything more?” he asserted, turning to me and spreading his arms demonstratively,” I enjoy it, you’re busy out in the open air. And, when you’re making money, it’s happy days.”
Sneizana & Justin both came from Lithuania to Brick Lane. Sneizana has worked as a trader her whole life, but when the markets began to die in her country, she realised she could do better in London and took the brave decision to move here. “This is my holiday!” Sneizana declared to me with a weary smile, since she works the other six days of the week as a cleaner. And “This is my day off,” Justin announced too – not to be outdone – because he works all week on a building site. Yet in spite of this relentless routine of work, both were keen to emphasise how much they enjoy selling old clothes in the market. “It’s relaxing. People like us, and we’ve made lots of friends,” Justin informed me enthusiastically,“There are Italians, French, Portuguese, Polish, Serbians and Croatians – every country is here and this is good!”
This is Sean who sells vacuum cleaners and spare parts on Sclater St Market. “I’ve been involved in markets since I was twelve and then, in my mid-twenties, I decided to do it full time – and twenty-five years later I am still here,” he informed me with a bemused grin. Sean bought the business from the man he worked for who had been here since the early sixties, which makes half a century of trading in vacuum cleaners every Sunday on the same spot.
“I enjoy the lifestyle because I’ve done it all my life,” he declared – a man of extraordinary resilience, as swarthy as a seaman after working six days a week in markets over all these years. “I’ve been selling people vacuum cleaner bags so long, I’ve now got the children of my original customers coming back and reminding me of when they came here with their mum and dad,” he admitted shyly, “It’s a community, completely different from the High St. If people don’t have enough money, I say, ‘Pay me next week.'”
Like many of the stallholders, Sean is ambivalent about the tall buildings under construction that will soon tower over the market. “I think the new flats will regenerate the area, “ he said optimistically, gazing up to the sky, “unless they decide they don’t want the market anymore because it lowers the tone…”
“I am from a land where everyone’s very relaxed,” declared Albert enigmatically from beneath his green felt hat, when I went along to have chat at seven o’clock, after all the other traders had gone and his stall remained alone upon the empty yard, while Ernest Ranglin’s mellow jazz drifted off down Sclater St. Albert was speaking of his distant homeland of Vojvodina, but nowadays he drives to Spitalfields every week from Sheffield in his van full of curiosities. “There is a guy who comes each week to chat, he says, ‘I can’t afford to buy anything but I like your music'” Albert revealed to me, cherishing the delicate compliment.
“I used to do lots of things, I’m a furniture maker and I used to be teacher of geography – I like challenges,” he confided with gentle melancholic irony, whilst presiding upon the square of tables that defines his personal oasis of thoughtfulness. Albert is the philosopher of Sclater St market, who can always be relied upon to turn up intriguing finds, whether old cameras, photographs, tools, records, musical instruments, carpets, hats – or almost anything else you care to imagine – and accompanies them with superlative absurdist patter.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
John Thomas Smith’s Ancient Topography
Bethelem Hospital with London Wall in Foreground – Drawn June 1812
Two centuries ago, John Thomas Smith set out to record the last vestiges of ancient London that survived from before the Great Fire of 1666 but which were vanishing in his lifetime. You can click on any of these images to enlarge them and study the tender human detail that Smith recorded in these splendid etchings he made from his own drawings. My passion for John Thomas Smith’s work was first ignited by his portraits of raffish street sellers published as Vagabondiana and I was delighted to spot several of those familiar characters included here in these vivid streets scenes of London long ago.
Bethel Hospital seen from London Wall – Drawn August 1844
Old House in Sweedon’s Passage, Grub St – Drawn July 1791, Taken Down March 1805
Old House in Sweedon’s Passage, Grub St – Drawn July 1791, Taken Down March 1805
London Wall in Churchyard of St Giles’ Cripplegate – Drawn 1793, Taken Down 1803
Houses on the Corner of Chancery Lane & Fleet St – Drawn August 1789, Taken Down May 1799
Houses in Leadenhall St – Drawn July 1796
Duke St, West Smithfield – Drawn July 1807, Taken Down October 1809
Corner of Hosier Lane, West Smithfield – Drawn April 1795
Houses on the South Side of London Wall – Drawn March 1808
Houses on West Side of Little Moorfields – Drawn May 1810
Magnificent Mansion in Hart St, Crutched Friars – Drawn May 1792, Taken Down 1801
Walls of the Convent of St Clare, Minories – Drawn April 1797
Watch Tower Discovered Near Ludgate Hill – Drawn June 1792
An Arch of London Bridge in the Great Frost – Drawn February 5th 1814
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana
Last Days At K C Continental Stores
Yesterday, I heard the sad news that Leo Giordiani is to retire at the end of April, after half a century behind the counter at K C Continental Stores in the Caledonian Rd, so I am publishing my story with photos by Bob Mazzer to encourage readers to take advantage of these last weeks to visit a legend in the small world of Italian delicatessens and send Leo off with a bumper final month.
Leo Giordani wraps up my Parmesan
Leo Giordani is eighty-one years old and has not had a holiday in twenty-three years, yet he is the picture of vitality and good humour. In his delicatessen in the Caledonian Rd, you discover a constant stream of loyal customers many of whom have been coming for three decades to exchange banter in Italian and cart off delicious salami, ham, sausages, olives, cheese, pasta, bread, wine and oil sold at his exceptionally reasonable prices. Clean shaven in collar and tie, and sporting an immaculately-pressed white coat, Leo stands with his hands clasped like a priest – surveying the passing world with a beatific smile.
While the transformation of Kings Cross and its environs has taken place around him, Leo and his shop remains unchanged – and all the better for it. His red front door matches his hand-made three-dimensional wooden lettering, spelling out “K C Continental Stores” upon the fascia, which contrasts elegantly with the eau de nil tiles at ground level. Note the charming old glass advertisements for Brooke Bond Tea and PG tips before you step over the sunburst doormat into Leo’s realm.
On the right and left, are glass-fronted cabinets displaying packets of pasta in every variety you could imagine. On the counter, sit freshly-made sausages and ravioli and mozzarella, while the walls behind are lined with shelves crammed with cans and bottles displaying brightly coloured labels in Italian. Straight ahead is a chilled cabinet of cheese while to the left is a chilled cabinet of salamis and suspended above all this are rails hung with a magnificent selection of hams and sausages.
Taking avantage of the wooden chair, strategically placed for weary customers, I settled down to observe the drama as Leo greeted everyone personally and customers grew visibly excited at all the enticing smells and colours of the delicacies on offer – and, in between all this, Leo told me the story of his beautiful shop.
“I opened Kings Cross Continental Stores on 1st October 1964, so I have been here more than fifty years. I came from Italy with my wife Noreena to work as waiters at the Italian Embassy but, after three years, the Ambassador went off to America so we stayed here. We knew about food but it took us a long time to learn how to run the shop and speak the language as well. I’ve always been very respectful with my customers, because you have to be good with them if you want them to come back. In those days, it was different here – better, because there were more shops, two fish shops, three greengrocers and a butcher. We had everything and now there’s nothing.
There were plenty of Italians living here, Keystone Crescent was all Italian then, but the old people died and the young people moved away. My customers used to be more Italian than English, but now I get more English than Italian – yet the English know more about this food than the Italians these days.
I have run this shop myself all these years, though sometimes my wife helped out with serving, cleaning and doing everything else that needs to be done. I get in here at nine each morning and I close at six because I’m not young anymore. For the last ten years, we have lived in Muswell Hill but I stay upstairs above the shop during the week while my wife is back in Muswell Hill picking up our grandchildren from school. Every night, I cook and wash-up for myself, and it’s a bit hard but I can make simple things like spaghetti.
I prefer working to watching television and the business has always been good here, but we are working for the Council now – they are my landlords, so I pay rent and Council Tax to them. We’ve got plenty of customers and we make money but, in recent years, there’s been nothing left after we paid the bills. We took a lot of money at Christmas yet my son, who works for Barclays, did my accounts and he said, ‘You’ve got nothing left.’ So now the time has come to retire. I really enjoy this job even if it is hard work and I know I’ll feel sorry for my customers once I’ve retired.”
I encourage you to pop over to K C Continental Stores before the end of April, so Leo can make you one of his celebrated sandwiches of Parma ham or salami in ciabatta and reminisce about old Kings Cross. And I recommend you take this last chance to stock up some delicious fresh Italian sausages, olives and parmesan – as I did – while you are there, too. And when you settle down to enjoy your sausages, be sure to raise a glass of Chianti in a toast to Leo Giordiani’s triumphant half century behind the counter in the Caledonian Rd.
Rails hung with a magnificent selection of hams and sausages
Leo’s red front door matches his hand-made lettering, spelling out “K C Continental Stores”
“the English know more about this food than the Italians these days…”
Photographs copyright © Bob Mazzer
Kings Cross Continental Stores, 26 Caledonian Rd, N1 9DU – until the end of April
Charles Goss In Norton Folgate
A century ago, a monster redevelopment threatened part of Norton Folgate. The widening of Bishopsgate at this point entailed the demolition of the buildings between the west side of the street and the railway line approaching Liverpool St Station. Fortunately, Charles Goss the far-sighted Archivist & Librarian at the Bishopsgate Institute at that time saw it as his melancholy duty to set out with his camera to record this fragment of London before it vanished from the world.
He climbed down below street level to photograph the rear of the buildings in Norton Folgate seen from the railway line, starting from Worship St and continuing up as far as the Bishopsgate Goodsyard. Among the adverts, placed to attract the attention of passengers arriving and departing the station, is one for a match between Tottenham Hotspur and Everton on January 8th 1910, dating his pictures exactly.
There is an ethereal quality to Goss’ street photographs taken in the grey light of dawn, with just a few early birds on their way to work and no traffic at all on the road yet. These are quiet pictures in which silence is only interrupted by the echo of footsteps. Hoardings upon Lupinsky & Brandon, the progressive tailors – suits to measure at 137 Bishopsgate – announce the impending destruction, “These premises have been acquired by the City Corporation for the widening of Bishopsgate Street.” Fortunately, business was transferring to 80 Bishopsgate directly across the road. You will observe that many businesses had already held clearance sales and vacated their shops, but the Great Eastern Rubber Company, the Dump Shop and the Norton Folgate Toilet Club were valiantly trading on to the bitter end.
I can readily imagine Charles Goss setting up his tripod on the pavement in Bishopsgate in the early morning drizzle, attracting curious looks from passersby and questioning himself even as he went about his business. Sensibly, he reconciled any doubt, bound the pictures into a fine book and put it on the shelf at the Bishopsgate Institute, reassuring himself that he was simply doing his job.
Yet Goss’ photographs capture the strangeness of the performance of human life – rendered tangible only in the moment when the scenery is about to be abandoned and the familiar reality of the street begins to dissolve, just like an abandoned set on the back lot. His views from the railway line enforce this sense of looking at the drama of the world from behind the scenes.
We can only wonder what he would make of Bishopsgate today where just a few remnants of his time remain, entirely overshadowed by the vast disproportionate recent structures worthy of the futuristic novels of H.G.Wells.
West side of Norton Folgate, looking north with St Leonard’s Shoreditch in the distance
In Acorn St
The King’s Arms seen from the railway
West side of Bishopsgate
Entrance to Acorn St
Norton Folgate seen from the railway
Norton Folgate, west side
Norton Folgate seen from the railway
10,000 choice cigars were sold here at less than half price
The facade of the City of London Theatre, Norton Folgate is visible to the left of this picture
B.A. Marcus, Lilley & Skinner, The Lord Nelson and Devon Restaurant
The Middleton Arms for Celebrated Welch Ale
The Middelton Arms seen from the railway line
The poster for the Tottenham Hotspur & Everton match dates these photos to January 1910
Lupinsky & Brandon, progressive tailors.
Spy the roofer upon the ridge above G.Ringrose.
The same buildings seen from the railway line
Observe The Dump Shop and the Norton Folgate Toilet Club.
The early morning sun casts its shadow over Norton Folgate a century ago
Norton Folgate seen from the railway
Bishopsgate Without viewed from Norton Folgate, 1910
Bishopsgate Without viewed from Norton Folgate, today
Archive pictures courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
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Charles Goss’ Vanishing London
The Trees Of Spitalfields Are Saved
At the arrival of spring, it is my great pleasure to announce that – thanks in no small measure to the large number of objections submitted by readers of Spitalfields Life last week – the developers of the Fruit & Wool Exchange, Exemplar Properties, have withdrawn their application to fell the line of London Plane trees in Brushfield St and thus the trees are saved to flourish for another generation.
The Return Of My Right Arm
Medical Update
They are cutting it off in a week – not my arm you understand but the plaster – and then I shall have my right arm returned to me after this unfortunate episode which began a month ago when I slipped and broke my wrist. I count myself lucky that it was a routine accident which will heal completely and thus is of no consequence in the wider scheme of things.
Already, I am typing these words to you with the fingers of my right hand and, in recent weeks, you may have spotted my photographs of Rodney Archer and of the trees in Brushfield St, which I managed to take by holding the camera in my left hand and pressing a single finger of my right hand against the shutter.
Let me admit, I cannot remember too much of these last weeks while my right arm has been out of service, although I shall never forget the moment when the doctor grabbed my broken limb by the hand and pulled as hard as he could to set it back into shape. Since the plaster was applied though, the arm became strange to me from the elbow downwards, secure in its case yet an unremitting source of discomfort too.
In response to this affliction, I have been sleeping away the hours. Each day, I have left the house to do my essential tasks before retreating again to my bedroom as soon as possible. My bed acquired a second counterpane of papers, where my cat nestled among the litter as I lay there putting my stories together.
Over the past weeks, I have learnt to do my buttons and light fires with my left hand, though cutting my nails and changing light bulbs still eludes me. Anyone who has received an envelope addressed by me will, perhaps, have thought twice about the deranged spidery left-handed handwriting.
I’d like to thank my loyal readers for their patience over the last month, while I have been unable to run around and undertake interviews and take photographs in my usual fashion. This situation will be remedied in coming weeks as use of my right arm returns to normal.
I am looking forward to the spring.
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Joe Lawrence, Traditional Butcher & Writer
Joe Lawrence
There is a legend that Dick Turpin started out as a Butcher’s apprentice in Whitechapel before graduating to the role of Highwayman. Yet only now that I have read Joe Lawrence’s fictionalised memoir The East End Butcher’s Boy can I fully appreciate how one activity could be the natural outcome of such an employment.
In 1972, at fourteen years old, Joe fell into a Saturday job at a Butcher’s shop in East Ham and found himself unwittingly swept up into a criminal underworld only to emerge on the other side at nineteen – fully qualified in butchery and a street-savvy survivor. Joe quickly became complicit as his boss used the premises for trading in all kinds of stolen goods with accumulating success and escalating risk.
Returning to these seminal experiences in the light of maturity, Joe has crafted a compelling account which reads like a thriller and allows us to identify with the innocence of the narrator while also fearing for the consequences as he gets in too deep. The work is an impressive debut, possessing an unmistakeable authenticity and, in its human sympathy and complex moral scheme, recalling the work of Bill Naughton, a favourite writer of mine.
Part of the fascination of the book is how Joe describes an entire illicit subculture with its elaborate codes and relative sense of justice yet, at the end, you realise it has been an unexpected love story – a rite of passage, delivering the protagonist into adulthood and a complex relationship with the society he inhabits.
Contributing Photographer Alex Pink accompanied Joe on his daily trip to Smithfield Market before dawn recently and, later in the morning, I met with them both at The George on the Isle of Dogs where we enjoyed pints and plates of delicious bangers and mash, supplied by Joe. “I’ve always loved getting up early,” he admitted to me fondly, “I’m up at three-thirty, out of the house by four and at Smithfield Market by four-thirty.”
After his volatile start in butchery, Joe forsook the beloved trade for twenty years, working for the Post Office and then running his own courier business from Bermondsey. “In 2010, I realised I’d had enough,” Joe confessed, “I thought, ‘What was it I enjoyed more than anything else in the world?'”
Joe also wrote ‘The East End Butcher’s Boy’ in six months in 2010 and, encouraged by a positive response from a literary agent, set out to get it published. “I have written another book and I am halfway through a third,” he revealed to me enthusiastically. Thus, Joe has reconciled himself to his past through writing and returned to what he always wanted to do.
“I know there is still a market for a traditional English butcher,” he informed me authoritatively, “so people send me their orders and I go down to Smithfield and get it for them, all packaged exactly as they want.” Now Joe is his own man, doing what he loves best, making his daily runs that end up at The George and working on his writing too.
Joe runs a meat raffle on the last Friday of every month at The George
Photographs copyright © Alex Pink
You can obtain a signed copy of THE EAST END BUTCHER BOY from Joe Lawrence for £5 by dropping him an email at eastendbutcher@gmail.com Joe is also happy to make personal deliveries of meat and poultry at keen prices to any readers in the East End direct from Smithfield Market.
You may like to read my other stories of butchery
Joan Brown, Secretary at Smithfield Market
