Row Over Demolition At Geffrye Museum
On the day of the launch of The East End Preservation Society, I tell the story of how the Geffrye Museum came to be founded as the outcome of a row over the proposed redevelopment of the Ironmongers’ Almshouses in the Kingsland Rd a century ago.
The Geffrye Almshouses – obvious potential for redevelopment?
Discovering a dusty, hundred-year-old file of letters labelled ‘Ironmongers’ Almshouses’ in the archive of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in Spital Sq recently, revealed to me the long struggle that took place a century ago to save the buildings which house the Geffrye Museum today.
It was a curious experience – both heartening and disappointing in equal measure – to recognise that history repeats itself, as the same arguments are used to justify sacrificing the past, requiring tenacious conservationists to jump through endless hoops to avert destruction of important edifices. How many of the best-loved old buildings only exist today thanks to the efforts of long-forgotten campaigns to save them.
There were once many ancient almshouses to the East of London but, as the city spread and streets were built around them in the nineteenth century, many were sold by their charities and moved beyond the capital. In fact, the two notable remaining examples – Trinity Green in Whitechapel and the Geffrye Almshouses in Haggerston both owe their survival – at least in part – to the intercession of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.
Perhaps it was because of its wide lawn facing the busy Kingsland Rd that the Geffrye Almshouses continued as a secluded haven for its senior residents long after others in the vicinity had gone. Yet at the end of the nineteenth century – as today in the East End – rising land values became a threat to these venerable buildings of the school of Wren that enshrined an important social endeavour within a gracious aesthetic.
The first hint of the approaching storm came in January 1893, when the Almshouses’ trustees applied to the Charity Commission seeking permission to spend capital upon necessary repairs and were refused. “The Commissioners would suggest the desirability of selling the site of the present Almshouses … to secure the necessary balance of income and expenditure,” came the reply. Yet five years later, the Commissioners reluctantly granted permission and the Almshouses’ future appeared secure.
But in 1899, the Shoreditch Vestry wrote asking if the Ironmongers’ Company had considered selling the site and supplemented their enquiry with a veiled threat of compulsory purchase. They intended to demolish the almshouses to construct an Electricity Generating Station on the site. Only the intervention of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the National Trust won assurances from the Ironmongers that they would not sell the Almshouses, and the Power Station was built nearby in Pitfield St. “To replace this sweet and peaceful spot with hideous works is an act of vandalism unworthy of a vestry which has hitherto been in the van of progress,” wrote Septimus Buss, Vicar of Shoreditch.
By now, the Ironmongers had acquired an appetite to realise the monetary value of their property and in 1906 they placed a notice in The Times advertising the site for sale to developers. They signed a provisional agreement with the Peabody Trust for £24,000 who planned to build tenement housing and – as with Mother Levy’s Nursing Home in Underwood Rd last year – Peabody had no interest in retaining or integrating the historic buildings occupying the site. This was in spite of a large petition by local people who wanted the open green space preserved as well as the Almshouses.
Permission from the Charity Commission was required for the sale to go ahead and, in response to objections from preservation groups, they held a public enquiry. Justifying the case for demolition, the Ironmongers claimed a Surveyor had concluded “no expenditure short of rebuilding would put the buildings in a suitable condition as regards accommodation and sanitation.” As part of the case for relocation, they reported that dead cats were frequently thrown over the Almshouses walls and the old women complained of the horrible sights that were to be seen in the houses in Maria St adjoining.
Arguing for preservation, Edwin Lutyens gave the case for the quality of the architecture and Dr Bryett, Medical Officer for Shoreditch revealed that out of six hundred and fifty-one acres in the borough, less than six were open land dedicated to public use. And, following the precedent of the Trinity Green Almshouses, which C.R. Ashbee of the Guild of Handicraft in Bow had campaigned to save ten years earlier, the Commission refused permission for the sale.
The Ironmongers Company demanded an appeal in the Court of Chancery to which opponents were not admitted but where the report of the surveyor, appointed by the Attorney General, was read out. W.D. Caroë wrote, “Architecturally, I consider these almshouses an object lesson in how such buildings should be dealt with. It would be difficult to better them. I have little doubt that when erected they were considered as among the best of their class.” In spite of this, the Court granted that Ironmongers’ appeal had been successful and they were free to sell the property to Peabody, thus introducing more high-density housing to an area already over-populated.
In the event, London County Council used its powers to buy the site of the Almshouses, lobbied by the Parks Committee. Their primary concern was to provide open space as a public amenity, creating children’s playgrounds and opening the site in 1912, without any plan for the use of the buildings. In 1911, a petition for a crafts’ museum had been presented to the Council, signed such luminaries as William de Morgan, Edwin Lutyens, Walter Crane, Richard Norman Shaw and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. The presence of the furniture industry in Shoreditch at that time made it an ideal location for such an enterprise and, displaying artefacts loaned by the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Geffrye Museum first opened its doors in the former Ironmongers’ Almshouses on 2nd January 1914.
It was touching to read the emotional, hand-written correspondence of those who fought over nearly twenty years to save the Geffrye Almshouses, struggling to raise money to further their case and often admitting disillusion, continuing even when they believed their cause was lost. “Two charming old almshouses in the Kingsland Rd are now for sale and likely to be destroyed. I’m afraid it is hopeless to try to save them but that is for you to decide,” wrote one passionate correspondent, enclosing a cheque for the fighting fund in August 1906. “I fear there is little probability of our being able to save the buildings,” confirmed Thackeray Turner, Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in September 1906.
Yet it was the enlightened vision and moral courage of those campaigners that ultimately led to the creation of the Geffrye Museum, and – as we approach the centenary of its opening in a few weeks time – I can only wonder what they might have made of the irony of this year’s battle in a similar vein to prevent the Geffrye itself from demolishing the Marquis of Lansdowne, an historic building in its own possession.
The Ironmongers’ Almshouses, 1714
The Daily Chronicle, February 2nd 1899
Prime redevelopment opportunity in the heart of bustling Shoreditch as advertised in The Times, August 23rd 1906
Archive material courtesy of The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
Launch of The East End Preservation Society in the Main Hall at the Bishopsgate Institute tonight, Wednesday 27th November 6:30pm
You may also like to take a look at
The East End Preservation Society
Letters from the Archive of The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
Remembering The Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital
The Pub That Was Saved By Irony
So Long, Spitalfields Fruit & Wool Exchange
So Long, Mother Levy’s Nursing Home
So Long, Abdul Mukthadir
This is a sad week in Spitalfields as I must report to you the tragic death of Abdul Mukthadir – known as Muktha. In recent years, Herb & Spice Curry Restaurant in White’s Row, where Muktha worked as a waiter, became a popular destination with people coming to be regaled by his famous storytelling abilities. He always waved to me as I passed and I shall not be able to walk down White’s Row without thinking of him there.
The charismatic Abdul Mukthadir – widely known as Muktha – was a born storyteller, blessed with a natural eloquence. As I quickly discovered when I sat down with him in the brief stillness of the afternoon, while the last diners emptied out of Herb & Spice Indian Restaurant in Whites Row. The businessmen were still finishing off their curry in the other half of the restaurant, whilst in a quiet corner Muktha produced a handful of old photographs and discreetly spread them out on the table to begin. Our only interruption was a request for the bill and once it had been settled, in the silence of the empty restaurant, Muktha’s story took flight.
“I came to Spitalfields in 1975 when I was ten years old. My father got married one day when he went back home to Bangladesh, it was an arranged marriage. At the time I was born, he was working in this country. He didn’t see me until two years later when he came back again and stayed for three months. I have another two sisters, and a brother born here.
My father missed his family, so once he got his British citizenship and he had the right to stay in this country, he made a declaration to bring us over and my mother had a big interview at the British consul in Dhaka. When we came we had nowhere to stay, my father shared a room with three others in Wentworth St. The other gentlemen moved into the sitting room and gave one room for us all to live there. After three weeks my father went to the GLC office in Whitechapel (where we used to go to pay the rent), and they gave us a one bedroom flat in the same street without a bathroom, and a loo in the passageway shared by two households, for £1.50 a week. My father earned £55 as a presser in the tailoring industry, and supporting a family on it was really difficult. On Saturday, he gave us each 10p and we used to go to the Goulston St Public Baths. They gave you a towel, a bar of soap and a bottle of moisturiser, and you could change the bath water was often as you liked. Six hundred people used to line up. It was very embarrassing for the Asian ladies, so one day my mother called all the ladies in the building into our flat. She said, “We can buy a tin tub so we can bath ourselves at home.” Everyone contributed, and they bought a long tin bath and took it in turns. But there was no hot water, so they worked out a rota, eight ladies put their kettles on at the same time. They put the bath up on the flat roof, and sent the smallest boys round to collect all the kettles and fill the bath. Only the women could do this.
We were not allowed to play outside alone, because of the racist movement. The skinheads used to prowl around the area. We could not go out to play football in the Goulston St playground until after the English boys had gone home, but even then we had to watch out for their return – because anyone might come and snatch our ball or beat us up. One day, my mum came out swearing at them in Bengali, “Leave my boy alone! Let them play!” We had that sort of problem every week, and for us that was the only playground we had. Although we were not allowed out after dark, we used to go to Evening Classes in Bengali on Saturday and Arabic on Sunday. At that time, there was a man who went round with a sack and if he found anyone, he would capture them and ask for a ransom. There were one or two incidents. One day he pounced upon our neighbour’s daughter as she was coming from Arabic. He caught her and tried to put her in the sack and carry her away. She was screaming and we were all at home, everyone came outside and I saw. We saw this three or four times. Between the English kids and the man following us to rape or take us, fourteen was very tough. My people were scared in those days. At that time you couldn’t even go out, it wasn’t safe.
We had to move because they were expanding the Petticoat Lane Market, it was really famous then. So the GLC offered my dad a flat in Limehouse but my father thought it wasn’t safe because there were no other Bangladeshis. Then he refused Mile End, even worse for a Bangladeshi family. Finally, he was offered a flat in Christian St off Commercial Rd. It had four bedrooms and a bathroom, and he fell in love with it. This was in 1979, after the six of us had lived in a one bedroom flat for four years. He was over the moon. I can remember the day we moved. He moved all the furniture in an estate car in five or six trips.
That was how we lived in England in those days. It was tough but it was fun and everyone was more sincere, people spoke to each other. No-one worked on Saturday and everyone used to invite each other round, saying “Come to my home next Saturday, my wife will cook!”
I have hundreds of stories because this is my playground. I belong here, I have so many memories, where I played and where I practised football. If I see a mess in this street, I clear it up because it matters to me. I am a poor man, if I was a millionaire I would do something here – but I am just a waiter, working to pay my mortgage.”
The first of Muktha’s family came to Britain in the nineteen-forties to work in the Yorkshire cotton mills and he married an English woman, a sailor lured by tales of Tower Bridge, the miraculous bridge that rose up to let the ships pass through. And when he returned to East Pakistan, crowds followed him shouting, “He comes from England. Wow!” They nicknamed him “Ekush Pound” because he earned £21 a week as a foreman at a cotton mill in Keighley, and at the request of the mill owner he sponsored eight men to return with him. Thus Muktha’s father and uncle came to Britain, setting in train the sequence of events that led to Muktha working in Herb & Spice Indian Restaurant in Spitalfields serving curry to City businessmen.
A waiter from the age of fifteen, Muktha was distinguished by a brightness of spirit that made him a popular figure among his regular customers, who all hoped that he might join their table at the end of service and enchant them with his open-hearted stories. He became enraptured to speak of Spitalfields, because the emotional intensity of his childhood experiences bound him to this place forever, it was his spiritual home.
Muktha with his beloved teacher Miss Dixon, “She was like a mother to me.”
Muktha (centre) with his class at the Canon Barnett School in Commercial Road, 1976.
Muktha at the Goulston St playground, with his friend Sukure who became a pop singer and is currently one of the judges of the Bangladeshi X Factor.
Muktha recalls that the winter of 1979 brought thirteen weeks of snow. (He stands to the left of the tree.)
Three friends sitting in the rose garden in Christian St – from left Akthar, Hussein and Mukthar.
On a day trip to France from the Montifiore School, Vallance Rd in 1980. (Mukthar is in the pale jacket)
Abdul Mukthadir in Goulston St outside the flat where he grew up
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So Long, Polly Hope
Polly Hope, long-term resident of Heneage St, died last week and I am republishing my profile of her today as a tribute to a spirited woman who will be fondly remembered in Spitalfields.
Polly Hope, 1933-2013
Polly Hope did not go out too much. And why should she, when she had her own dreamlike world to inhabit at the heart of Spitalfields? Stepping off Brick Lane, going through the tall gate, across the courtyard, past the hen house, through the studio, up the stairs and into the brewery – you would find Polly attended by the huge dogs and small cats, and a menagerie of other creatures that shared the complex of old buildings which had been her home for more than forty years.
Here, Polly had her sculpture workshop, her painting studio, her kiln, her print room, her library and her office. It went on and on. At every turn, there were myriad examples of Polly’s lifetime of boundless creativity – statues, paintings, quilts, ceramics and more. And, possessing extravagant flowing blonde hair and the statuesque physique of a dancer, Polly was a goddess to behold. One who knew who she was and what she thought, and one who did not suffer fools gladly.
So, while I was on my mettle when I visited Polly’s extraordinary dominion, equally I was intoxicated to be in the presence of one so wholly her own woman, capable of articulating all manner of surprising truths, and always speaking with unmediated candour from her rich experience of life.
“I don’t know where it comes from. My father was a general in the British Army with generations of soldiers behind him. There were no artists on the family, and I have never found any great grandmother’s tapestry or grandfather’s watercolours.
I went to Chelsea and the Slade, and hated it. They wanted to teach you how to express yourself, but I wanted to learn how to make things. So I went to live in a tiny village in Greece because it was cheap, and I supported myself and my family by writing novels under a pseudonym. That was where I discovered textiles because they still make quilts there, and I was looking for a way to make large works of art which I could transport in my car. So I used the quiltmaker to help with the sewing. Today there’s various wall hangings of mine in different places around the world.
My second husband, Theo Crosby, and I liked East London, and Mark Girouard – who was a friend – showed us this place and we bought it for tuppence ha-penny in the early seventies. At that point, the professional classes hadn’t realised Spitalfields was five minutes walk from the City, but we cottoned onto it. This was one of the little breweries put up in the eighteen forties to get the rookeries off gin and onto beer, and make a few pounds into the bargain. Brick Lane was not the area of play it is now, it was a working place then with drycleaners, ironmongers, chemists, all the usual High St shops – and I could buy everything I needed for my textiles.
I decided it was time to do some community work, so I got everyone involved. Even those who couldn’t sew for toffee apples counted sequins for me. I did all the design and oversaw the work. The plan was to make a series of tableaux to hang down either side of Christ Church but we only completed the first two – the Creation of the World and the Garden of Eden – and they hang in the crypt now. I’ve done a lot for churches, I was asked to design a reredos for St Augustine’s at Scaynes Hill, but when I saw it – it was a perfect Arts & Crafts church – I said, “What you need is a Byzantine mosaic,” and they said, ‘”Yes.” And it took six years – we offered to include people’s pets in the design in return for five hundred pounds donation and that paid for the materials.
I am jack of all trades, tapestry, embroidery, painting, ceramics, stained glass windows, illustration, graphics, pots, candlesticks and bronzes. My ambition is to be a small town artist, so if you need decorations for the street party, or an inn sign painted, or a wedding dress designed, I could do it. I can understand techniques easily. When I worked with craftsmen in Sri Lanka, or with Ikat weavers, I learnt not to go into the workshop and ask them to make what you want, instead you get them to show you their techniques and you find a way to work with that. Techniques that have been refined over hundreds of years fascinate me. I don’t see any line between craft and art, I think it’s a mistake that crept in during the nineteenth century – high art and low craft.
I’m a countrywoman and I grew up on a mountain in Wales where there were always animals around. Living here, I play Marie Antoinette with my pets which all have opera names. My step-daughter Dido even brought her geese once to stay for Christmas. I have a mixed bag of chickens which give me four or five eggs a day – one’s not pulling her weight at the moment but I don’t know which it is. When they grow old, they retire to my niece in Kent. She takes my geriatric ones. I used to have more lurchers but one died and went to the big dog in the sky, now I have a new poodle I got six months ago and a yorkie who always takes a siesta with the au pair, as well as two cats. And I always had parrots, but the last one died. I got the original one, Figaro, from the Club Row animal market. One day I found him dead at the bottom of his cage. I just like living with animals, always have done all my life. A house is not a home without creatures in it.”
Once we had emptied Polly’s teapot, we set out on a tour of the premises with a small procession of four legged creatures behind us. Polly showed me her merry-go-round horse from Jones Beach, and her hen house designed after the foundling Hospital in Florence, and her case of Staffordshire figures with some of her own slipped in among them, and the ceramic zodiac she made for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, complementing the building designed by her husband Theo Crosby. And then we came upon the portraits of Polly’s military ancestors in bearskins and plaid trousers, in images dating back into the nineteenth century, and then we opened the cupboard of postcards of her work, and then we pulled box files of photographs off the shelf to rummage.
We lost track of time as it grew dark outside, and I thought – if I created a private world as absorbing as Polly Hope’s, I do not think I would ever go out either.
Monty & Fred, deer hound brothers, 2009.
Oscar, golden retriever.
Portrait of Theo Crosby, with one of the Club Row parrots and a lurcher.
Portrait of Roy Strong and his cat.
Portrait of Laura Williams depicted as Ariel.
Wall hanging at St Augustine’s, Scaynes Hill, West Sussex.
The Marriage at Canaa.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand.
The Red Flower, applique and quilting.
Archaeological Dig, applique and quilting.
Portrait of Polly Hope copyright © Lucinda Douglas Menzies
Artworks copyright © Polly Hope
The New & Old East London Groups
Bow Rd by Elwin Hawthorne, 1931
Bow Rd by Christine Hawthorne, 2013
Last year, The East London Group – one of major artistic movements to come out of the East End in the last century – was recovered from obscurity by David Buckman in his important book From Bow To Biennale – Artists of The East London Group. Next week, paintings by members of The East London Group are to be hung on public display in the East End for the first time in over a generation as part of an exhibition at Town House in Spitalfields that opens on Thursday 28th November. In the show, living artists exploring the urban environment today – Anthony Eyton, Peta Bridle, Nicholas Borden, Marc Gooderham, Sebastian Harding and Joanna Moore – are exhibited alongside the work of their predecessors as a tribute to the original East End London Group.
North East Bethnal Green by George Board, c. 1930
Railway Fence by Walter Steggles, c.1930
Bridge at Stratford by Walter Steggles, 1938
Bow Bridge by Walter Steggles, c.1930
Grove Hall Park, Bow, by Harold Steggles, c. 1930
The Red Bridge by Walter Steggles, c. 1930
Snow at Bow by Henry Silk, c. 1930
Art Classroom Stove, Whitechapel, by Walter Steggles, 1938
Christine in Hanbury St, Spitalfields, by Anthony Eyton, 1976/8
Christ Church from Hanbury St, Spitalfields, by Anthony Eyton, 1980
Durant St, Bethnal Green, by Nicholas Borden, 2013
Quilter St, Bethnal Green, by Nicholas Borden, 2013
Globe Tavern, Borough Market, by Nicholas Borden, 2013
Spitalfields by Nicholas Borden, 2013
Christ Church, Spitalfields by Marc Gooderham, 2013
Edge of Brick Lane by Marc Gooderham, 2013
Rented Rooms, Bethnal Green Rd, by Marc Gooderham, 2013
Thames Mudlarks by Joanna Moore, 2013
St Dunstan-in-the-East By Joanna Moore, 2013
Wapping Old Stairs by Peta Bridle, 2013
Des & Lorraine’s Junk Shop, Bacon St, 2013
Moorgate by Sebastian Harding, 2013
Nicholas Culpeper’s House, Spitalfields, 2013
The Marquis of Lansdowne, Cremer St, by Sebastian Harding, 2013
NOW & THEN, an exhibition of the New & Old East London Groups, opens on 6:30pm Thursday 28th November at Town House, Fournier St, Spitalfields, E1. The show runs until 8th December. Weekdays 11-6pm & Weekends 11-5pm.
You may also like to read David Buckman’s features about The East London Group
Henry Silk, Artist & Basket Maker
& my features about the contemporary artists
The Drypoint Etchings of Peta Bridle
Nicholas Borden’s East End View
Truman’s London Keeper 1880 Export Stout
Ben Ott, Head Brewer at the New Truman’s Brewery
It was my privilege and delight to pop over to the new brewery at Hackney Wick last week and share a bottle of Truman’s London Keeper 1880 Double Export Stout wth Ben Ott, the Head Brewer. Unfortunately, he had almost emptied his glass by the time I came to take a picture, but I think Ben’s beatific smile gives an eloquent illustration of his pride and joy in this exciting new brew.
When Ben commenced brewing at Truman’s Brewery in Hackney Wick back in September, picking up from where the Brick Lane Brewery had left off twenty-four years ago, he realised that the first brew had to be special. For the first use of the original Truman’s yeast, that had been cryogenically preserved at the National Yeast Bank in Norwich, Ben adapted a recipe from a nineteenth century brewer’s record to create Truman’s London Keeper, brewing just two thousand bottles as trophies in celebration of this auspicious moment in East End brewing history
“It’s overwhelming when you go the archive, there’s quite a lot of really old Gyle books recording the brewing at Truman’s day by day,” Ben admitted to me, growing wide-eyed in wonder, “I looked for one that was one hundred years before my birth date but that turned out to be a Sunday, so then I looked at ninety-nine years before I was born – 19th April 1880 – and I found they were brewing a double export stout. I kept to the original gravity of 10/80 and I saw that there was so much pale malt, so much brown and so much black.” From this starting point, Ben researched the varieties of hops which were used at the time, seeking out modern strains with comparable qualities to compose his own recipe that would work for a contemporary taste.
If history was going to go into a bottle and be cherished, Ben decided champagne bottles should be employed, sealed with wax, and Baddeley Brothers – die-stampers and engravers who have been operating at the edge of the City of London since 1859 – were commissioned to print the labels. And James Morgan, the man responsible for the rebirth of Truman’s, signed every label alongside Ben as Head Brewer.
Truman’s London Keeper is a delicious brew for winter, warm and dark and tangy. If you love beer and the East End, then one of these bottles is the ideal keepsake – but maybe you will not be able to resist opening it for too long?
Each of the limited edition of two thousand bottles is signed by James Morgan, re-founder of Truman’s Beer and Ben Ott, Head Brewer
The Truman’s Gyle Book 0f 19th April 1880 that inspired Ben Ott to create Truman’s Keeper
Jack Hibberd of Truman’s Beer with Charles Pertwee of Baddeley Brothers
Printing the labels on the Original Heidelberg at Baddeley Brothers in Hackney
The last Truman’s Beer brewed in Brick Lane
Head Brewer, Ben Ott, with the first Truman’s Beer brewed at the new brewery in Hackney Wick
Baddeley Brothers photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
Click here to get your bottle of Truman’s London Keeper 1880!
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First Brew at the New Truman’s Brewery
Tony Jack, Chauffeur at Truman’s Brewery
Happy Birthday East End Trades Guild!
Celebrating the first Anniversary of the launch of the East End Trades Guild this week, Chairman Shanaz Khan (Proprietor of Chaat Bangladeshi Tea House), gives the Annual Report and James Brown has produced a print that you can buy to support the work of the Guild.
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This commemorative linocut print by James Brown, sold in support of The East End Trades Guild is available online from James Brown, Here Today Here Tomorrow and The Herrick Gallery.
Martin Usborne’s portrait of the founding of the Guild at Christ Church Spitalfields, a year ago.
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The Rise Of The East End Trades Guild
The Founding of the East End Trades Guild
Irene Stride Remembers Spitalfields
Irene Stride
Irene Stride and her husband, Rev Eddy Stride, expected to be missionaries in Africa – but fate intervened. “At that time, all the Christian missionaries were being thrown out of China by the Communists and they were going to Africa, so the Missionary Society told us to ‘Seek home ministry!’ and we ended up in Spitalfields instead,” Irene recalled fondly and without regret, when I visited her recently in her home on the Isle of Dogs.
“It was a very poor area and people said to us, ‘What are you doing taking children to a place like that?’ because it was grim, but my husband said he couldn’t live with himself if we didn’t take what was offered,” she admitted to me, “We felt there was a need in those days. We went there in 1970 and stayed until 1989, when we retired.”
In spite of their reservations, Irene and her family quickly found themselves at home in Spitalfields. “After a few weeks, my family really loved it there, because they found they could go cycling everywhere, around the City and up to the West End,” Irene told me, growing enthusiastic in recollection.“When we came, the Jewish people and the Cockneys were moving out and the Bengalis were moving in,” she added, “now the Bengalis are moving out and people from the West End are moving in.”
“The church was shut up and was dangerous inside, so we used the hall in Hanbury St for services and the crypt was a shelter for alcoholics,” Irene explained, outlining the challenges she and her husband faced, “Dennis Downham was there before us, he had cleared out the crypt and put in a dormitory and a day room. It was run by a warden and men came into the crypt if he thought they had a chance of getting off alcoholism and some did, and some didn’t. My boys used to play snooker with the men, but they got upset when they saw them next day lying passed out in the street. The men used to come and knock on the Rectory door if they thought I would give them something – a cup of tea or a sandwich – so we did get to know them quite well.”
Spitalfields became the location that defined her husband’s ministry and, even today, it is the place for which Irene holds the strongest connection. “When I was twenty-three, Eddy and I were planning to be missionaries in Algeria, because Eddy had been there for three years during the war and he felt that he should go back as a missionary,” she confided to me, “So I went to the Mount Herman Missionary Training College in Ealing while he studied Theology in Bristol. His sister was one of my best friends and I knew him before he went to Africa. Then, while he was an engineer in Algeria, his sister kept talking about him. When Eddy came home, we clicked and it went from there.”
“After college in Bristol, we went to Christ Church, West Croydon, from there we moved to West Thurrock, South Purfleet and to St Mary’s Dagenham, and we were there for eight and a half years. That was where Eddy got his instruction to go to Spitalfields and off we went. I’m very glad I went there and my two boys met wonderful wives there. It was a very interesting place with all these characters and some real gems. My son Derek thinks it is the centre of the world for him!”
“Afterwards, we retired to Lincolnshire where we had friends and the family came for weekends but, once Eddy went to be with the Lord, I thought I had better move to be with the family, so I came back to London. I came here to the Isle of Dogs and I’m very happy here. I’ve got Stephen round the corner and Derek in Spitalfields, he takes me to Rainham Marshes and we go birdwatching every Monday.”
Irene Stride outside the Rectory, 2 Fournier St, summer 1975
The Stride family in the Rectory garden
Eddy Stride outside Christ Church, Spitalfields
Collecting the children at the school gates, Christ Church School, Brick Lane
From the Christ Church Crypt brochure of 1972 – “Outside a man is faced with vast impersonal hostels, sleeping rough, or seeking the shelter of the crypt”
Sandys Row, 1972
Brick Lane, 1972
Davenant House, the ‘new’ Spitalfields, 1972
The crypt passageway
A corner of the crypt
The sleeping area
Relaxing in the crypt, the snooker table
The crypt – sitting area
The crypt – kitchen
The crypt – dining room
The crypt – staff room
A resident of the crypt
Irene’s Daily Mirror cutting tells the story of a family who took refuge in the crypt during World War II
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A View of Christ Church, Spitalfields
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